Great songs. Likable performances. It holds up quite well

| Apr 23, 2025

Oliver! is a fine and entertaining family favorite filled with fantastic musical numbers.

| Jun 27, 2023

It will inevitably win you over with its elegance and delicate approach to storytelling.

| Feb 2, 2023

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.

| Jul 6, 2022

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.

| Jul 6, 2022

Oliver! will send Charles Dickens spinning in his grave -- in waltz time!

| Mar 11, 2022

There are probably other shortcomings in Oliver!, which you could notice if the over-all effects weren't so thoroughly enjoyable that they delightfully dull the critical senses.

| Mar 4, 2022

[I] was a bit shocked at the way Dickens had been softened and sentimentalized. But I must admit that the music is good, the sets occasionally breathtaking and the performance of Ron Moody is a delight. Just the thing for a dark winter afternoon.

| Mar 4, 2022

Strong acting performances help to make this an entertaining film, stylishly directed by Carol Reed.

| Mar 4, 2022

I am very exuberant about Oliver! It is certainly one of the greatest movie musicals ever filmed. Its performances are virtually flawless and Carol Reed’s direction should be a textbook for every would-be director of the art form.

| Mar 4, 2022

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.

| Mar 3, 2022

Oliver! is a very happy surprise. English musicals are notoriously dire, and it is good to find one with the bounce and vitality that one expects only from America.

| Mar 3, 2022

Oliver! is a musical that couldn't give you a spoonful more if you got down on your knees and begged for it. It gives all it has got and a tremendous amount of enjoyment that turns out to be.

| Mar 3, 2022

Carol Reed directing a musical? Fair enough, when the musical is Lionel Bart's version of Oliver Twist and when you remember Sir Carol's way with child actors.

| Mar 3, 2022

The show survives on Bart's music; and Onna White has devised the wonderful dance routines with some brilliantly ingenious effects.

| Mar 3, 2022

Oliver! is very much Dickens' story, but with Lionel Bart's rollicking music spread lavishly throughout, it becomes almost an opera at times.

| Mar 3, 2022

It takes a certain audacious talent to please children without progressing to the maudlin or degree of silliness that turns adults off. Oliver! should please all, including perfectionists in music, dance and acting.

| Mar 3, 2022

There is not a bad performance in the movie -- although Hugh Griffith seems teetering on the brink of one as a drunken magistrate -- but the movie is dominated by Ron Moody's brilliant tour de force as Fagin.

| Mar 3, 2022

I thought it more effective on the stage, even though I enjoyed the film, which is big and lavish and fetchingly melodic.

| Mar 3, 2022

A wonderfully warm musical that touches the heart.

| Mar 3, 2022