YMMV / Oliver & Company

• Angst? What Angst?: As John Grant notes in The Disney Character Encyclopedia, it's a bit odd that Fagin seems to be totally indifferent to Sykes getting pulverized by a train. Yes, the guy was a colossal Jerkass who forced him to work for him and pay off his debt, and who threatened to kill him if he couldn't, but Grant notes that a man still died horribly in front of him.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Georgette. People either love her diva personality or hate her for being self-absorbed and whiny. Some of her detractors warmed up to her after she helped in the rescue of Jenny.
  • Tito. Latino audiences, particularly those living in the U.S.A, aren't particularly fond of his character and see him as a painfully obvious, racist caricature without any genuinely redeeming traits whatsoever. However, others find him to be an funny character with lots of good comical lines.
• Catharsis Factor: After spending the whole movie being a ruthless and threatening villain, it's very satisfying to see Sykes scared, extreme close-up of shrinking pupils and all, right before the subway train plows through him and his car.
• Complete Monster: Bill Sykes is a strikingly dark villain in an otherwise lighthearted story. Running a dock shipping company as a front, Sykes is in truth a vicious gangster and Loan Shark who indebts downtrodden people to him and then forces them to pay him back, with interest, under threat of torture and murder. Sykes casually orders a man's death be dragged out and then to have him killed with Cement Shoes in one scene to intimidate his current debtee Fagin, whose life and those of his beloved dogs Sykes regularly threatens. When Fagin comes up with the idea of selling the kitten Oliver back to his owner, young Jenny, to pay back his debt, Sykes uses the opportunity to instead kidnap Jenny and hold her hostage to extort her parents, threatening to have the girl Eaten Alive by his ravenous Dobermans. When Fagin and his dogs try to save the girl, Sykes attempts to kill Jenny's would-be rescuers and retrieve her to either finish ransoming, or kill as well.
• Critical Dissonance: When it was originally released, the reception it received from critics was very mixed, with them usually calling it So Okay, It's Average. It didn't help that The Land Before Time was released around the same time and that The Little Mermaid (the film that kicked off the Disney Renaissance) came directly after it. Nowadays, fans consider it to be very underrated and over time, its reception got better with fans.
• Crossover Ship: It is very common for Oliver to be shipped with Marie.
• Cry for the Devil: Yes, Roscoe and DeSoto are a pair of vicious Dobermans who gladly serve their boss, but they whimper and yelp like real dogs as they're electrocuted to death (and unlike most cartoon electrocutions, it is NOT Played for Laughs), so it can be easy to feel the tiniest bit of sympathy at their deaths.
• Cult Classic: Although obviously not as popular as much of Disney's other works, this was one of Disney's most popular post-Walt, pre-Renaissance films back in its time, and is considered today one of its most underappreciated pieces.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Rita is a surprisingly popular character amongst fans despite being relatively minor compared to the other characters.
  • Georgette has her share of fans, as do Tito and Dodger. In Tito's case, it's not too surprising.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: The evil Bill Sykes is dead, but Fagin is still an unemployed man with a gambling problem who lives in a dilapidated boat and who can't afford to feed his dogs. The movie ends with a happy song, but the future of Fagin and his dogs is hardly promising. Granted, he's no longer in debt, and now he has a rich friend in the form of Jenny, so he's far better off than he was at the start of the film.
• Ethnic Scrappy: Tito is this to some Mexican Americans, due to his blatantly stereotypical portrayal. Others don't really mind him though, and actually enjoy him, which needless to say, has become quite a debate.
• Fanon:
  • While it's left up in the air as two whether Dodger and Rita have feelings for each other, plenty of fan-art and fanfic LOVES to show them as a couple, and in a few cases, with pups of their own.
  • Dodger's past is also pretty ambiguous; fanfics out of the movie often depict him as being abandoned by his mother as a puppy before he joined Fagin's gang.
• Fountain of Memes: Tito.
• Genius Bonus:
  • Roscoe Boulevard and DeSoto Avenue are major streets in the San Fernando Valley, several miles from Walt Disney Studios.
  • The Doberman was originally bred to protect a tax collector.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: While the film was only a moderate success in its home country, it proved to be very popular in France. To promote the film's French release in 1989, Anne Meson made an album called "Oliver", which was a hit in France. Oliver, Dodger, Tito, and Francis were featured in a series of music videos starring her between 1989 and 1990. Anne Meson even performed the song "Oliver" at Disneyland Paris (then "Euro Disney") with Oliver and Dodger during the park's inaugural year.
• He Really Can Act: Billy Joel as Dodger. Just listen to Dodger when he's not singing. Very smooth talking.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: When Roscoe and DeSoto are antagonizing Tito in their introductory scene, Einstein asks "Why don't you pick on someone your own size?" to which Roscoe menacingly replies "Like YOU?" In Cheech Marin's next work with Disney, he winds up on the receiving end of that exact same question at one point, to which his companion gives the same response Roscoe does.
• Love to Hate: Sykes is a sadistic, cruel mobster with no redeeming qualities to speak of, but he's frequently cited as a great villain, if not one of Disney's best villains, due to how terrifying and realistic he is.
• Moe: The titular Oliver is a Heartwarming Orphan in the form of a Cute Kitten. Likewise, his owner, Jenny, is also pretty cute.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • While it is somewhat implied that he has done worse things before, Sykes crosses it when he kidnaps a 7-year-old girl to try to extort money out of her wealthy parents.
  • Sykes' dogs Roscoe and DeSoto definitely cross it BIG time when they put the hurt on poor Dodger who tried to defend Fagin from them.
• Older Than They Think: It went through the theaters release cycle again in the '90s without any/much indication that it wasn't new, but newer audiences reacted more or less the same way than at its day: tepidly at first, more appreciatingly after a long time.
• Popular with Furries: It's not uncommon to see fanworks (especially Fan Vids) involving Dodger, Oliver, Rita, or Georgette despite the film being one of Disney's more low-key films. Roscoe and DeSoto are also fairly popular.
• Questionable Casting: Sheryl Lee Ralph, who voices Rita, is a singer as well as an actor, with several singles, an album, and several leading roles in Broadway musicals (most notably Deena Jones in the original run of Dreamgirls) to her name, so it's really rather odd that they gave Rita's big solo, "Streets of Gold," to Ruth Pointer. Don't get us wrong, Ruth's performance is fabulous, but she and Sheryl don't sound anything alike. The answer probably lies in the fact that it is much easier to attract "bums on seats" to your movie if the main song{s} are sung by people whom the average person might have heard of.... like say, a Pointer Sister?
• Realism-Induced Horror: In a musical about talking animals, we have one of Disney's scariest villains in Sykes. What makes him so frightening is how many people there are like him in the real world. Violent, unforgiving, wealthy and powerful criminals who take advantage of the poor, trapping basically-decent people in debt, driving them to desperation as they sink even further into poverty and must take extreme measures to avoid being killed are absolutely out there, and much of what Sykes does isn't too far off.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • A pre-Blossom Joey Lawrence (this was right at the tail end of his Gimme a Break! days) provided Oliver's voice.
  • For fans of The Lion King, they will recognize Tito's actor Cheech Marin as Banzai.
  • Bette Midler, who plays Georgette, would go on to play Winnie Sanderson from Hocus Pocus five years after this movie.
  • Writers Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise would later direct Beauty and the Beast and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
• Rooting for the Empire: While Oliver & Company aren't outright disliked, many casual viewers found themselves siding with the Sykes during the climax of the film. Retroactively, it helps that he's become somewhat of an Ensemble Dark Horse within the Disney villains, so more than a few viewers would be tuning in just for him.
• Signature Scene:
  • Dodger and Oliver jumping on cars in "Why Should I Worry?".
  • Also during "Why Should I Worry?", Dodger walking on the air vents.
  • The deaths of Sykes and his dogs, due to them being surprisingly realistic and terrifying for a Disney film at the time.
• Signature Song: "Why Should I Worry?"
• So Okay, It's Average: The film is seen by many as having a rather shallow and weak plot that is kept alive by decent music, a colorful cast (though Oliver himself can be quite divisive), and excellent performances by the likes of Billy Joel and Bette Midler.
• Special Effect Failure: Very few to make note of, but two do stand out during the final chase sequence, where Sykes' two Dobermans disappear into the highway as they vanish into the distance, and later on the bridge where if one watches closely right before Sykes is hit by the train, Fagin's cart on which the entire gang is riding along the bridge cable is empty.
• Spiritual Successor: The 1996 animated show Saban's Adventures of Oliver Twist also combines Dickens' novel with anthropomorphic animals and musical numbers.
• Squick: The birds that assist Georgette during "Perfect Isn't Easy" literally have their tongues sagging at the sight of her, which has some disturbing implications.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Many fans (and even non-fans) of The Rescuers believe that Penny should've been kept in the movie as the girl who takes Oliver in (which was a scrapped idea since the movie was originally going to be a spin-off of the aforementioned film), as she was already an Animal Lover and they would both share similarities as Heartwarming Orphans. Her replacement Jenny, while not outright disliked, is seen by many as a Suspiciously Similar Substitute.
  • As antagonists to the gang, Roscoe and DeSoto don't get much to do after their opening scene. Their later scenes are quite short, and the only members of the gang the two of them even come in conflict with are Oliver and Dodger.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Oliver is with the gang for less than a day before Jenny takes him in, which really limits the opportunity he had to form a bond with these characters.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Far more than most of Disney's animated films (which are either timeless or set in the far past). This film is undeniably set in The '80s—a calendar in the background sets the date of April 20th, 1988 on the day Oliver meets Dodger and the others, and obviously made in the '80s. The clothing, hairstyles, and general environment drive home the era the film is from. Also, since municipal animal control cracked down on them in the '90s, street dogs are much rarer in New York now than they were when this film was released in 1988 (cats, however, are still everywhere). As mentioned on the main page, this could be a reason why Disney didn't release the film on home video until the late '90s.
• Vanilla Protagonist: While Oliver garners a lot of audience sympathy from being The Woobie and a Cute Kitten, he, much like the original Oliver from the novel and musical rendition, is mostly a Pinball Protagonist, and is outshone a fair bit by the very colorful supporting cast such as Fagin's gang and Georgette, who provide most of the film's humor and musical numbers.
• Vindicated by History: At the time, critics blasted it for being a rather shallow film that tried and failed to capture Disney's past charm. In recent years, it's been seen as a decent transitional film between Disney's dark age and the Disney Renaissance.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: New York City looks absolutely gorgeous in this movie.
• The Woobie:
  • Oliver was pretty much meant to be this by design. Nearly getting washed down the drain, actually getting chased by big, vicious dogs, ending up trying to get food from a hot dog vendor and kicked into the wall, and then when he gets help from a stray named Dodger to steal them, Dodger keeps them all for himself and goes back home. Oliver follows Dodger, despite being put through a variety of pranks along the way, and when he gets to Dodger's home, he is surrounded by a gang of strays who at first act aggressively toward him, but warm up to him after he claws the nose of a savage doberman who's an enemy of said dog gang, and then is expected to take part in their criminal activities in service of their homeless owner, Fagin. So when Oliver is watching over while Tito helps hotwire a car, he slips and falls into a mess of wires. Jenny, the little girl in the car adopts him, and brings him home to Georgette, a vain show dog who is jealous of him even having a PORTION of Jenny's attention, and manipulates Dodger's gang to take Oliver back when they show up. Even this becomes a moot point when Jenny gets kidnapped by the ruthless crime boss Sykes, and Sykes then chases Fagin, his dogs, and Oliver into the rails of the New York subway system after they rescue Jenny. Oliver leaps to Jenny's defense, biting Sykes in the hand and leaping onto the face of one of his Dobermans. While we're not shown exactly what happened next, Oliver is implied from his Disney Death to have been ALMOST killed by it.
  • Jenny is this as well, to a lesser extent. She's a Lonely Rich Kid who - desperate for a friend - lavishes affection onto the kitten she adopted only for him to go missing. When she goes looking for him, she's kidnapped by a terrifying loan shark who tries to hold her for ransom and implies he'll feed her to his Dobermans (or worse) if her parents (who aren't even in the country) don't pay.
  • Also to mention is Fagin, whose criminal actions are offset by the fact that he's both genuinely desperate - the movie makes it clear that he has every reason to fear for his life if he can't repay Sykes - and pretty much completely pathetic, as well as by his genuine affection for his dogs and Oliver and his empathy for Jenny.

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