Twist: Critic Reviews

If there is anything to be gained from tugging Oliver Twist from early industrial London to contemporary Toronto, it is not evident in this small, bland Canadian film.

The movie's far too stagy and pretentious.

You know things are bad when the most interesting character, the menacing brute Bill Sykes, is never heard or seen on-screen.

Despite some strong performances, the movie never really makes a case for its own existence.

The only thing funny about Twist is how seriously it takes its own pompous preposterousness.

Apart from the somewhat novel conceit of turning Dickens into the stuff of a Gus Van Sant picture (see My Own Private Idaho), there's nothing original, nor compelling, about Twist.

Although faithful to the social-reformist urgency at the heart of Charles Dickens' writing, Twist translates the novel's mixture of evil and poignancy into a valid theme for today's hard-boiled audiences.

More tedious than affecting, the film feels like an excuse for reproducing more of the kind of kinky imagery notoriously employed by fashion photographer Steven Meisel in his creepy pedophile advertisements for Calvin Klein.

Not much happens in Twist, apart from a dismal series of personal degradations, each more depressing than the last.

Stahl is definitely one to watch closely -- he's the real deal. But the emerging plot isn't.

Ultimately more unsavory than enlightening, and would have benefited from a more humorous approach to its purloined themes.

Decidedly dark but consistently engaging.

My memory may be a little vague on this one, but I don't recall any incest scenes in the original Oliver Twist

This would make Dickens suicidal, probably in more than one way.

One of the glummest recent attempts to drag a classic story into the 21st century.

A surprisingly deep, dramatic twist on an old melodrama.

A joyless series of shooting-up scenes.

Unrelenting in its tragedy, this movie should come with a major bummer warning or something to help you recover from the haunting images. The story is a little thin at times.

Isn't without interest, but overall it's more an earnest attempt than a successful accomplishmrent.

Cuaron ran into trouble by being overly faithful to Dickens' story, changing almost nothing except the setting.

There's nothing here a handful of show-stopping production numbers -- or a good steam cleaning -- couldn't fix.