Phonearl
Good start, but then it gets ruined
Chirphymium
It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional
Geraldine
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
SnoopyStyle
Oliver (Joey Lawrence) is the last free kitten who gets left behind in the box. He has to find a way to survive in the bustling streets of New York. He joins streetwise dog Dodger (Billy Joel) and his gang of strays. They steal for bum Fagin who owes loan shark Sykes. Jenny Foxworth is a lonely rich girl with absent parents.The story is based on Dickens' Oliver Twist. The animation is inferior Disney. It may be too daunting to animate the streets of New York without looking cheap. It's pre-CGI and leans more towards TV level. There is a vast difference between this and Beauty and the Beast 3 years later. This looks bad by comparison. There are many songs but none of them are catchy enough. The story is a functional adaptation with appealing enough characters. In the end, it's fine for a family film.
Anssi Vartiainen
You know those women, and to a lesser degree men, who, even when they're in their forties or fifties, still try to dress, look and sound like they're still in their twenties. Like they're still relevant and cool and hip. Of course you do. Well, not to be mean, but Oliver & Company is a lot like that. Made in the late 80s, and probably one of the Disney films that show its age the most, it's very heavily tied to the era it was made in. And not just the era, but the city of that era. In this case New York. Now, sometimes that wouldn't be that big of a deal. It'd be like a time capsule. But Disney films are supposed to be timeless, and this is anything but. I still get it, I was born in the 80s, even if barely, but I'm not sure that kids born today will get this when they grow up. It's just so disgustingly 80s.But yeah, that's more of a pet peeve of mine than an outright flaw of the movie, but it has some other problems as well. Like the villain, who has a cool visual design, but has next to no characteristics beyond the fact that he's a loan shark and trains dogs to do his bidding. Or the fact that the main character, Oliver, contributes nothing to the plot, aside from being the MacGuffin. Or even the animation style, which is once again so disgustingly 80s. I hate the way 80s are always made to look.Nevertheless, there's a lot of good stuff as well. The dog characters are all a lot of fun, with the possible exception of Georgette, who I can't make up my mind about. All of them have fun personalities and work well off each other. The film also contains some nice song sequences and is really the first true Disney musical in a while. The Great Mouse Detective had some songs, but not to this degree. Of the songs Why Should I Worry is especially worthy of notice.And yet I can't say that Oliver & Company is a particularly good film. It's certainly not awful and I have some fond memories of it from my childhood. But unlike so many other Disney films, it doesn't hold up when seen as an adult.
lisafordeay
I first purchased this as a present back in 1997(16 years ago)on VHS and to this day I still watch this movie. From the beginning I literally shed an odd tear for the movie's main charcther Oliver(voiced by Joey Lawrence when he was a kid)who is an orphan kitten that was looking for a good home,but nobody wanted him AT ALL. So enter Dodger(voiced by singer Billy Joel)who is a streetwise dog,that looks after Oliver along with his other mutt friends including a irritating dog,a dog that wants to be an actor,a goofy dog and a female dog (who I'm really not kidding here has EYE SHADOW!!). Meanwhile later on in the movie we meet another girl called Jenny who finds Oliver tangled up in wires as Oliver was teaming up with the irritating dog who later has a thing for a poodle(voiced by another singer Bette Midler) that belongs to Jenny.But who will Oliver choose; Dodger the dog and his owner Fagin(voiced by Dom Deluise) and the other mutts or Jenny the sweet and innocent red head that you cannot help but love?Bottom line I loved this movie since I was a child and to this day I still have it on VHS all the time and it never fails to bring a tear in my eye(yes you gotta be a cynical moron not to cry over this movie).The songs were great especially Billy Joel's song Why Should I Worry and the other song In Good Company sung by the little girl Jenny.This movie was witty,cute,sad,entertaining and a feel good movie.For that I'm giving it an 8 out of 10. A 10 is too much as the movie can be a bit silly with the whole talking animals but if your an animal lover and you love 101 Dalmatians,Lady & The Tramp then check it out.
Stompgal_87
I didn't hear about this film until around 1996/1997 when it was heavily publicised in the UK, which made me think it initially came out at around that time. When I found out that this film originally came out in 1988, I was surprised but wasn't disappointed since my sister and I loved this film as children and as young women (I'm 26 and my sister's 22) we still love it to this day.Although the animation is linear and quite flat (which is present in other Disney films such as 'The Jungle Book' and 'The Rescuers'), the lip-sync on the human and animal characters is detailed as well as their facial expressions, despite the absence of tears falling from Jenny's eyes when she confronts Fagin about Oliver being 'kidnapped.' The most positive aspects of this film are its swift pace (particularly during the climax where Sykes and his Dobermans chase Fagin, Jenny and the other animals down the subway track); the talented and relatively well-known voice cast including Billy Joel (Dodger), Bette Midler (Georgette) and Cheech Marin (Tito) of 'Cheech and Chong' fame; the background designs (especially the bird's-eye views of New York City and Central Park); and the songs (the ever-so-catchy 'Why Should I Worry?' and the sweet 'Good Company' are standouts). Jenny and Oliver are sweet while Georgette is beautiful and Tito is comical, although I would like to have seen Jenny reunite with her parents and show them Oliver.As well as the 1968 musical 'Oliver!' this is one of my favourite adaptations of the classic Charles Dickens novel and also one of the most underrated films I've ever seen. 9/10.
