High off his “recent” (2002) success and Oscar win for directing the overrated The Pianist, Roman Polanski focuses his energy on a pointless and uninspired update of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, the tale of a little orphan boy living in a city full of fat, ugly men with crazy facial hair.  It’s gloomy, and it’s dismal.  Also, it’s rated PG-13, which kind of begs the question: “Who was this film made for?”  Too dark for kids, and not nearly dark enough for adults.  Smells like a winner to me!

Aside from Twist’s capable technical credits and thick Ali G accents, its lone highlight is Ben Kingsley’s performance as Fagin – a character which was previously the source of great vengeance and furious anger when portrayed by Alec Guinness in a somewhat anti-Semitic manner in the still-definitive 1948 version from David Lean.  Even though he’s made up to look like Geoffrey Rush playing a Gandalf gone bad, Kingsley’s Fagin is cast in a much more favorable, sympathetic light here, which aids in the undermining and butchery of Dickens’ novel by adapter Ronald Harwood.  The rest of the roles must have been filled when the casting director was whacked out on prescription cough syrup.  Talk about zero personality – even Bill Sykes’s dog, who is supposed to be “fierce,” comes off cute and cuddly.  Like just about everything else in Twist, he’s got no teeth.

2:10 –

for disturbing images