"Oliver Twist": There's no music to perk up this drab Dickens

Great expectations are unavoidable when Roman Polanski takes on a Charles Dickens classic. Alas, his version of "Oliver Twist" fails to live up to them.

This French-British-Czech production is handsome, intelligent and well-made, but Polanski's personal stamp is largely missing. There are no definitive scenes or performances. The cast sometimes seems to consist of understudies, or actors who might have been second or third choices for their roles.

Even Ben Kingsley's attempts to draw sympathy to that child-corrupting pickpocket, Fagin, can't compete with memories of Alec Guinness and Ron Moody in the same part. Jamie Foreman's Bill Sykes is never very scary, and Barney Clark is not charismatic enough to play the orphaned Oliver. Only Leanne Rowe, as Sykes' doomed young girlfriend, Nancy, brings vitality and conviction to her role.

The story line remains close to Dickens. Oliver becomes a slave in a workhouse where the boys are nearly starved to death. He escapes to London, gets recruited by Fagin's top thief, the Artful Dodger (Harry Eden), tormented by Sykes and rescued via Nancy. Ultimately he's adopted by a kindly gentleman, Mr. Brownlow (Edward Hardwicke), who is convinced of his essential innocence.

Movie review

Showtimes and trailer

"Oliver Twist," with Ben Kingsley, Barney Clark. Directed by Roman Polanski, from a screenplay by Ronald Harwood. 128 minutes. Rated PG-13 for disturbing images. Several theaters.

Originally published in installments between 1837 and 1839, Dickens' story has been filmed more than two dozen times since 1909. It also inspired an Oscar-winning musical, "Oliver!" (1968), and an even lighter Disney cartoon, "Oliver and Company" (1988).

To take it back to its more somber origins, director Polanski and screenwriter Ronald Harwood have wiped out all traces of musical comedy. Polanski and Harwood won Oscars for their adaptation of the Holocaust classic "The Pianist," and their "Oliver Twist" suggests a similarly bleak view of human nature.

But David Lean's 1948 version did so far more vividly, beginning with its Gothic opening sequence, in which Oliver's pregnant mother succumbs to a storm on her doomed journey to a workhouse. Even Jacob Tierney's recent and rather miserable update, "Twist," in which the pickpockets became rent boys and the Artful Dodger is a junkie, represented an attempt to find a fresh way to address Dickens' social concerns.

If you've never seen "Oliver Twist" in any form, you might get something out of Polanski's treatment. Or you might rent one of the better, earlier versions.

John Hartl: johnhartl@yahoo.com