Movies - Oliver & Company

Home > Listing Index > Movies > Oliver & Company

	Movies - Oliver & Company

Oliver & Company is a 1988 animated feature film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation. It is the twenty-seventh animated feature released in the Disney animated features canon, distributed by Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Distribution on November 18, 1988.

The plot was loosely based on the Charles Dickens novel Oliver Twist, which has been adapted many other times for the screen. In this version, Oliver is a cat, Fagin's gang is made up of dogs, and the story is set in modern-day New York City.

Tagline: The first Disney movie with attitude.

Plot

Oliver, an orange cat lost in the streets of New York City, gets found one spring day by a brown-spotted mongrel named Dodger. That dog recruits Oliver to steal some sausages from a hot dog vendor named Louie, but the orphan feline later receives no share in the deal.

Dodger runs to the barge of his owner—a pickpocketer by the name of Fagin—along with his meal, to give to his other friends: Tito the chihuahua, Einstein the Great Dane, Rita the afghan hound and the ever-serious Francis, the bulldog. No sooner does Oliver sneak into their home, located below the city's docks, than the dogs get into a fit of fighting and confusion over their visitor. Breaking it up is Fagin himself, coming in to see what goods the dogs have stolen during the day for them to live on. He's terrified to discover that the dogs have returned with some worthless trinkets. He informs them that he is running out of time to repay the money he borrowed from Sykes, a ruthless shipyard agent. Going out on a long quay, he finds out his conditions from the agent: that money, Sykes warns, must be paid in three days. Being a poor person, Fagin is in a lot of trouble.

Next day, he sets out into the city with his canine menagerie, Oliver included, and tries to sell his wares at a pawn shop, with no success. The animals, meanwhile, come face-to-face with a limosine driven by a butler named Winston. Winston is employed by the Foxworth family and is taking care of their daughter Jennifer while the couple is out of the country. The dogs stage an elaborate ruse in order to get Winston out of the car. Tito and Oliver slip in and attempt to steal its' radio to give to Fagin so that he'll have something to pawn to pay back Sykes. In doing so, Tito gets shocked by the electrical system, and Jennifer finds the poor cat all tangled up in the wires near it. Taking him home at Fifth Avenue, she has found a friend, making Oliver lucky to have been adopted twice in two days.

Back on the street, Fagin's dogs are discussing on a plan to retrieve the cat back to their home barge. The plan is activated the following day, to the chagrin of Winston and the Foxworth's pampered, pedigreed poodle, Georgette. During the operation, Tito falls in love with Georgette, much to her disgust.

Back at the barge, Oliver feels that he does not nicely fit in with his dog friends, mainly because Jenny is his owner. Little does he know that he himself is Fagin's best hope for paying Sykes, for when the poor man comes back from business, and sees the gold tag on the cat's collar, he has an idea: with only pencils and paper, he writes to the "Very Rich Cat Owner" at Oliver's address, along with a map to guide the addressee to his home.

When Jenny returns home from school, she finds the letter on her door. Reading it, she dreadfully realises that she has to pay a ransom in order to get her cat back. That night, she sets off for the city docks along with Georgette to do so, along with the enclosed map.

Fagin is now devising an "air-tight plan" in order to pay Sykes the ransom. Entering the evil man's building, he learns he has not paid it, and Sykes orders his dobermans, Roscoe and Desoto, to attack Dodger immediately. But when Sykes sees Oliver's gold tag, he gives Fagin one last chance to get it in twelve hours.

Jenny and the poodle become lost, but finally arrive at their destination with some difficulty. Frightened and upset, Jenny meets Fagin and explains that she's trying to find the awful person who stole her little cat. Fagin is distraught that his "wealthy cat-owner" is just a little girl who has brought her piggy bank to try and save her pet. Feeling guilty, he returns Oliver to her. No sooner does she get Oliver back than Sykes kidnaps her in order to ransom the girl to her wealthy parents, and Fagin and the rest go after the villain at his place.

Once they arrive there, Fagin's dogs and Georgette concoct another series of funny plans to save Oliver and his owner. But while they try to do so, Sykes and his dobermans get in their way before Fagin crashes in on his motorcycle to pick them all up. A chase on the city streets and the subway ensues, Fagin and the gang racing away with Sykes raging behind them. Oliver and Jenny are saved while Roscoe and Desoto get killed off on the electric tracks. As a train approaches all of them, everyone else swerves over on the left side of the Brooklyn Bridge. But for Sykes, it is too late: he meets his fate when the train crashes on him and his black limosine.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Oliver & Company ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Oliver & Company; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Searches on eBay