Pickwick

I never saw the musical, but much of the magic of this early Dickens novel is lost in this production.

While the Pickwick Papers has arguably the easiest plot to translate to film in the Dickens corpus, consisting mostly of repetitive character portraits and disparate unrelated scenes satirising Victorian life or complaining about some social ill. That means that a few characters can be fleshed out and certain choice gaidens can be represented to bring us to the happy conclusion.

However, this work seems to avoid doing even the bare minimum of plot development. Instead, it crams copious amounts of long song and dance scenes in between blips of plot. Most of the songs, in my opinion, aren't good, and they're inane and not even closely related to the characters.

Then, like a procrastinating elementary school students' book report, all of the issues raised in the sprinkling of plot are resolved in like 30 seconds at the end with a dizzying smattering of Deus ex Machinae.

The best thing by far about the movie is Secombe's rendition of "If I Ruled the World." The best rendition of a beautiful song sung in a flawless operatic voice. You'll probably feel it appropriate if you read the novel, too. For Pickwick really is, for all his funny conservativism, a good guy who uses his wealth and influence to try to elevate people in his own way. He would use his tenure to do good for others if he ruled the world.

Honourable Mentions: Aladdin (1992). "Never Had a Friend Like Me" is similar, not only in title, but also in content to "Never Met a Feller Like Me," which elucidates on the characters of both Sam Weller and Samuel Pickwick. It's one of the few good songs in this musical.