Carol Reed has just made the kind of movie they don’t make anymore, and it’s as good as ever -- maybe better, coming when it’s more difficult to do.

The most important thing about [Oliver!] is pleasure, the sheer delight of a movie that can change the lives of kids who see it -- for the better, for the better -- and serve as a public bath for adults to luxuriate in, sing in, get cleansed in.

In the constant seesaw of realism/fantasy it is hard for anyone to keep one clear thread continuously in mind, and most of the performances are as muddled and indecisive as you might expect.

It certainly does have a few things to like about it, but it's just not quite enough to lift it out of its somewhat ho-hum nature, a fact that is clearly not helped by the film's over-stretched runtime.