Oliver Twist

Sony, color, PG-13, 130 min. plus supplements, Dolby Digital 5.1, widescreen, Street: Jan. 24, $28.95; First Run: L, Sept. 2005, $2 mil.

A Roman Polanski kiddie movie? According to the featurettes on this disc, that's exactly what the legendary director wanted to make after he scored his Best Director Oscar for The Pianist. Polanski set out to make a "film for my children" and wound up ruling out fairy tales, adventure stories and all other kid fare in favor of making a rather straightforward rendition of this familiar Dickens tale. The featurettes, directed by ubiquitous DVD documentarian Laurent Bouzereau, repeatedly hammer home the kiddie connection, but one can hardly imagine today's crop of moppet moviegoers clamoring to see this lushly picturesque moral tale. It's the kind of picture parents force their kids to see as a trade-off for accompanying them yet again to the latest Harry Potter. Bouzereau's featurettes are the usual making-of type, with "Kidding With Oliver Twist" offering young star Barney Clark reading to us from his handwritten diary of the production. "The Best of Twist" salutes the talented craftspeople who brought life to Polanski's vision of mid-19th century London. The only interesting revelation included on the entire disc comes in "Twist by Polanski," when the director and his producers discuss his emotional connection to the material: his own past as a "hungry orphan" whose family was decimated by the Holocaust caused him to identify with the character of Oliver. Sir Ben Kingsley, who gives the picture's best performance as a mega-Cockney Fagin, contributes some very somber and serious reflections on Polanski's genius, plus a few on his own ("I'm a portrait artist," he says, thus he talked and walked like Fagin for the duration of the production). One can only hope Polanski's children were properly grateful for Daddy's efforts on their behalf.