THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER:
A RETROSPECTIVE ON A LOST ANIMATED GEM!
By Nico Beland
RICHARD WILLIAMS ANIMATION
Tack and Princess Yum Yum in The Thief and the Cobbler
There have been many animated features that have pushed the boundaries of what can be done with the medium over the years, movies that were groundbreaking not just in animation but film in general. From the vast library of animated films released by Disney such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Frozen to Pixar popularizing computer-animation with the first fully CG animated feature Toy Story, and other studios such as DreamWorks, Laika, Warner Bros., and just recently Sony Pictures Animation with the 2018 Oscar winning game-changer, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse have all released some of the most impressive and unique animated films of all time.
However, there is one animated movie that seems to get overlooked and yet this particular film contains some of the greatest and most lively hand-drawn animation ever made. It’s the story of one man’s passion project that took decades to develop and how what would have been the greatest and most ambitious animated movie of all time ended up being one of the most infamous stories told in the animation industry, that film is The Thief and the Cobbler.
The film was directed by the late Richard Williams (Who Framed Roger Rabbit) who was a highly beloved and influential animator behind such works as the title sequences for the Pink Panther movies, Casino Royale (Not the Daniel Craig one!), and What’s New Pussycat?, the 1971 television adaptation of A Christmas Carol produced by Chuck Jones, Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure, and his most innovative project, creating the animation for Robert Zemeckis’ 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The Thief and the Cobbler was going to be his masterpiece and was independently funded with every job Richard Williams’ animation team could get going towards the production of the movie.
Originally conceived as a film adaptation of the stories of Mulla Nasruddin but was changed after a falling-out between Williams and the family of the books’ author Idries Shah, the movie holds the record for the longest development history ever for a feature starting in 1964 and was “completed” in 1993. The movie had quite a fascinating development history that was faced with several problems along the way such as an embezzling producer during the production of Nasrudin, going overbudget, mismanagement, and missing deadlines to name a few, and let’s not forget the release of a certain Disney film known as Aladdin which certainly interfered with The Thief and the Cobbler’s production after Williams made a distribution deal with Warner Bros.
Because of all that, Warner Bros. opted out of distributing the movie and The Completion Bond Company took over the production, fired Richard Williams, and turned what would have been an otherworldly visual experience into a cheap knockoff of Aladdin with forced pop-culture references, songs, and musical numbers. I can go on for hours about the development history on the movie so it would probably be best if you read articles or watch videos on the internet that cover the production of The Thief and the Cobbler, might I recommend AniMat’s Animation Lookback on the History of The Thief and the Cobbler?
I will be covering all four versions of The Thief and the Cobbler each with a review of the different cuts of the film, the 1992 workprint of the film by Richard Williams, the 1993 Fred Calvert cut The Princess and the Cobbler, the 1995 Arabian Knight version released by Miramax, and the 2006-2013 fan restoration of the film by Garrett Gilchrist known as The Thief and the Cobbler: The Recobbled Cut. Starting off with Richard Williams’ original 1992 workprint of The Thief and the Cobbler before the film was taken away from him and butchered by Hollywood executives.
THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER (1992 WORKPRINT):
INCREDIBLE FOR ANIMATION ENTHUSIASTS, NOT MUCH HERE FOR A GENERAL AUDIENCE THOUGH!
By Nico Beland
Movie Review: *** out of 4
RICHARD WILLIAMS ANIMATION
The Thief has stolen the 3 Gold Balls in The Thief and the Cobbler
As previously mentioned due to the troubling production history of The Thief and the Cobbler and Richard Williams failing to meet deadlines, the film was seized by The Completion Bond Company and was heavily butchered by TV producer Fred Calvert who was hired to inspect the film’s production and Miramax, then owned by Disney acquired the North American rights and altered it even further both resulting in lazily stitched together musicals trying to ride on the success of Disney’s Aladdin. However, Williams was able to sneak away with a copy of his original workprint of the movie when it was being taken over.
This version of the movie was eventually released as a bonus feature on the DVD of the 2012 documentary film, Persistence of Vision which was directed by Kevin Schreck and covered the movie’s long production history and how it ultimately ended up becoming a cheap Aladdin knockoff. Quick thoughts on Persistence of Vision, it’s an incredible and fascinating documentary that gives you plenty of insight on Richard Williams and his animators’ experiences trying to get The Thief and the Cobbler made and seeing what it became in the end is one of the saddest and most insulting things ever to happen in the film industry.
Going back to Richard Williams’ 1992 workprint of The Thief and the Cobbler, while it is an incredible experience and features breathtaking animation not seen in either of the released versions, it isn’t a complete film and only recommended to animation enthusiasts and people already aware of the long production history. Williams originally intended the film to be a practically silent movie with the story being told through the animation and when you take the animation out it’s a very generic and basic cookie cutter story.
Each version of the movie pretty much has the exact same plot with the only difference being the execution of it. Really your enjoyment of this film all depends on whether you prefer watching some of the most spellbinding hand-drawn animation ever put to film or listening to the most laughably bad songs and musical numbers in movie history that put the Barb Wire musical sequence to shame.
The film is set in a golden city protected by the power of three magical gold balls, a humble shoemaker named Tack meets Princess Yum Yum and the two of them immediately fall in love. Meanwhile, a bumbling, nameless thief manages to steal the balls from atop the tallest minaret which puts the entire city in jeopardy.
Tack and the Princess embark on an adventure to recover the balls and save their city from destruction by a ruthless race of warlike one-eyed monsters literally known as the One-Eyes. Along the way they encounter a group of misfits called the Brigands, a mad and holy old witch, and the city’s devious grand vizier ZigZag (voiced by Vincent Price-Vincent (short film), The Great Mouse Detective, Edward Scissorhands) who plans to take control of the golden city by marrying the Princess (Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?).
The workprint features the voices of Sara Crowe (Carry on Columbus, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Round Ireland with a Fridge) as Princess Yum Yum, Sir Anthony Quayle (Lawrence of Arabia, Anne of the Thousand Days, The Fall of the Roman Empire) as King Nod, Joan Sims (Carry On franchise, On the Up, As Time Goes By) as the Nurse/Nanny and the Old Witch, and Christopher Greener (The Elephant Man, Sky Bandits, The Rainbow Thief) as the Mighty One-Eye.
Overall, The Thief and the Cobbler’s workprint may be unfinished and probably won’t appeal to mainstream audiences that much, it’s still very impressive from an animation standpoint. Like I said before, the story is extremely bare-minimum and there is very little dialogue with the exceptions of a few characters, Williams’ intention was to make a film where the story is told through the animation and it’s not about what the characters say but rather how they move to express who they are which is an ambitious effort and makes for what could have been a very unique, visually stunning animated feature.
For the most part the characters aren’t very interesting but again it’s how they’re animated that makes them come alive. Tack is a (mostly) mute character modeled and animated after many silent movie comedic actors, particularly Charlie Chaplin and his physical comedy does get a good laugh even if he always comes out of it just fine, he’s kind of like a pale-skinned Mr. Magoo…if Mr. Magoo was actually funny!
The Thief, like Tack is also mute but his character and personality shine through his facial expressions and movements reminiscent of old slapstick cartoons like Wile E. Coyote or Tom and Jerry. Unlike the Miramax edit where they made Jonathan Winters provide monologue for the Thief because Harvey Weinstein thinks your kids are stupid, but we’ll get to that later.
And then we have the film’s villain, ZigZag who steals the show whenever he’s onscreen and is the highlight of every version of the movie. Literally I can sum up everything that’s great about the entire movie in this one character.
From his exaggerated design, walk-cycle, and energy both animation and personality wise to being voiced by the legendary Vincent Price and standing out as the only character in the whole film to speak entirely in rhyme. While nowhere near as threatening as Jafar from Aladdin, there is a slimy and sinister presence to ZigZag whenever he appears in the film, he’s a character you both love to watch and despise at the same time, which also makes it more satisfying when he meets his inevitable demise in the end.
Much like the best of Disney’s animation library, The Thief and the Cobbler has some of the most breathtaking animation ever drawn on paper with many stand-out moments to choose from. Sequences like the Thief trying to get the gold balls but constantly fails and everything blows up in his face like a Wile E. Coyote or Tom and Jerry cartoon, an incredibly trippy chase sequence with Tack and the Thief, and most notably the destruction of One-Eye’s war machine with every single detail being shown, that sequence alone deserves an Oscar.
If you’re a Richard Williams fan…No, an animation fan in general then both the workprint of The Thief and the Cobbler and the Recobbled Cut restoration are required viewings. Sure, it won’t appeal to everyone, but animation enthusiasts everywhere will get a big dose of imagination and a feast for the eyes and senses.
THE PRINCESS AND THE COBBLER:
YOU WON’T FIND MUCH GOLD OR MAGIC IN THIS BOTCHED VERSION!
By Nico Beland
Movie Review: ** out of 4
ALLIED FILMMAKERS
ZigZag, The Thief, Princess Yum Yum, Tack, and Chief Roofless in The Princess and the Cobbler
So, now we dive into the butchered released versions of The Thief and the Cobbler that most people are familiar with. Starting off with the 1993 cut of the movie by Fred Calvert who was a TV producer originally hired by Warner Bros. to inspect the production when Richard Williams was in charge of the film, but since he was fired after missing the deadline The Completion Bond Company decided to make Calvert the new director of the movie.
I know, that’s quite a leap going from producing cheap animated TV shows that make The Super Mario Bros. Super Show look like Avatar: The Last Airbender to helming pretty much the most ambitious animated feature film of all time. But Fred Calvert did know a lot about the production and what went on behind the scenes when he was inspecting it, clearly he was well educated about it so maybe he’d be qualified to honor all the hard work that Richard Williams put into the movie that spanned several decades…spoiler alert, he completely screws it up!
That’s where The Princess and the Cobbler cut comes in which was finished and released in 1993 only in Australia and South Africa and produced under the now-defunct Allied Filmmakers studio, best known for producing movies like Super Mario Bros. and James and the Giant Peach. Why is this version deemed inferior and a complete insult to the animation industry? Plain and simple, because Fred Calvert took what should have been a visually transfixing film experience into a tired and unoriginal rip-off of Aladdin because I guess the business model in the animated film industry states that original and interesting stories with compelling characters don’t make money and copying whatever Disney is doing brings in the profits, we all know how good Thumbelina and The Swan Princess turned out!
Yep that’s right, The Thief and the Cobbler is now a musical because hey, Aladdin was successful I’m sure we can be a success too by doing the exact same thing as that movie. What was once a visual extravaganza with cutting-edge animation unlike anything audiences have ever seen before is now accompanied with extremely bland and clichéd songs written by Robert Folk, inconsistent, cheap, and downright inferior animation compared to the majestic and lively animation done by Williams, and a new voice cast.
The plot is exactly the same as the workprint as well as all the other versions of the movie so there’s no point in recapping it, so instead I’ll discuss what was changed from Richard Williams’ original vision and what was left intact. First off, the changes and obviously the most glaring alteration to the movie are the songs and musical numbers that feel like an extremely last minute afterthought rather than songs to progress the story along, it’s literally the equivalent of cheap, manufactured corporate greed in the form of music and the person who suffers is you.
The songs added to the movie include the “Princess Wanting More” song She is More, the romantic song Am I Feeling Love?, the comedic song We’re What Happens When You Don’t Finish School, and the traditional end credits pop song that always plays at the end of every animated movie released during that time, It’s So Amazing. Putting these songs into the film is the biggest crime Fred Calvert committed when he was in charge of finishing the movie, it pretty much killed any and all sense of dignity from Richard Williams’ magnum opus and completely alter the tone of the movie for the worst.
However, I did grow up with the Miramax cut of the movie which we’ll get to later and it also includes the same songs as this version. Before I go any further let me make something perfectly clear, these are not good songs they’re bad, really, REALLY, bad but at the same time I have a little bit of a soft spot for them and enjoy them as a guilty pleasure.
They’re so lazy and generic that I find them amusing and unintentionally funny in a so bad it’s good way. This does not excuse the bad songs in any way, I’m just saying that I personally enjoy them ironically.
It’s a shame that the songs are terrible because while the lyrics and melodies fail to make an impression the singing voices for Tack and Princess Yum Yum sound quite good. Steve Lively and Bobbi Page have wonderful singing voices, I just wish the material they were given wasn’t a godawful dumpster fire set to music, if they ever had a CD where they sang together outside of the songs from this movie I’d buy it and listen to it.
The other big change in The Princess and the Cobbler version is getting a new voice cast, Vincent Price’s voice as ZigZag is left untouched as well as in Arabian Knight and the Recobbled Cut, but many of the other characters have been recast and redubbed. The Princess and the Cobbler features the voices of Steve Lively as Tack, Bobbi Page as Princess Yum Yum, Clive Revill (Fathom, Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, The Transformers: The Movie) as King Nod, Mona Marshall (South Park, Fraggle Rock: The Animated Series, Cheers) as the Nurse/Nanny and the Old Witch, and Kevin Dorsey as the Mighty One-Eye.
There isn’t much I can say about the voice cast in this version, they’re not awful or annoying but they’re nothing spectacular either. Steve Lively is nowhere near as ear-grating as Matthew Broderick in Arabian Knight and Bobbi Page in my opinion has the best speaking voice for Princess Yum Yum, nothing against Sara Crowe from the original she portrayed the character okay but sometimes she sounds too young and Jennifer Beals’ problem in Arabian Knight is that her speaking voice does not sync up to Bobbi Page’s singing voice at all and it sounds really awkward when she talks and then sings, Page on the other hand doesn’t sound nearly as high-pitched as Sara Crowe and it fits better with Princess Yum Yum’s character at least in my opinion.
As bad as this version is, there are a couple of things that Fred Calvert improved on, The Princess and the Cobbler does do a better job at establishing the world that the characters inhabit at the beginning of the movie with a narration by the Cobbler and through a mural painting on a wall in the palace that maps out their destinations and tasks right before Tack and Princess Yum Yum go on their adventure. But it’s more difficult to admire the positives when you realize this was someone else’s passion project getting messed up by a passionless hack.
I still can’t believe Don Bluth and the animation team behind FernGully: The Last Rainforest provided some of the extra animation for this version. Their animation styles would look great on their own but when it’s being mixed with this very complex and detailed animation it’s extremely noticeable and very distracting.
This cut is harmless at best as a movie to show your kids, but a complete insult to animation enthusiasts everywhere. And it’ll only get worse as we dive into the diabolically vile extract excreted out of the anus of the Hollywood system, the worst is yet to come, be very afraid.
ARABIAN KNIGHT:
MORE LIKE ARABIAN NIGHTMARE!
By Nico Beland
Movie Review: * ½ out of 4
MIRAMAX
Tack and Princess Yum Yum in Arabian Knight
Here we are at last, the golden turd of The Thief and the Cobbler’s releases and given how questionable and odd Fred Calvert’s changes were in The Princess and the Cobbler it just makes you wonder, could it possibly get even worse? Oh yeah, a lot worse actually case and point, the 1995 version of The Thief and the Cobbler released in North America by Miramax and originally under the title Arabian Knight, this is the version of the film that most people know.
This version is pretty much structured the same as The Princess and the Cobbler, bland songs, inconsistent animation, and all except with quite a few key differences. Apparently, when Miramax acquired the North American distribution rights for the movie, they were all set to release The Princess and the Cobbler cut as is but then everyone’s favorite man in Hollywood decided to alter it even further so it could satisfy his own devilish ego, Richard Williams should have mailed both Calvert and Weinstein katana blades with notes attached to them.
So, now that we know what Fred Calvert did with the movie, what does Harvey Weinstein decide to include in this ambitious animated feature? How about recasting the main characters (Except for ZigZag thankfully!), overstuffing the runtime with monologues by the silent characters like Tack and the Thief because again, Harvey Weinstein thinks kids are too stupid to understand silent physical comedy, cutting out most of the best sequences from Williams’ workprint, and throwing in as many pop-culture and Aladdin references as possible to the point where The Thief and the Cobbler completely loses its identity and becomes another bland and forgettable animated kids movie.
Seriously, get used to all the monologue, narrations, and speaking from characters who should be keeping their f*cking mouths shut. There’s Tack and the Thief as already mentioned but now even ZigZag’s pet vulture Phido now talks (Yeah, an evil grand vizier with a talking bird sidekick, that has never been done before in a Disney movie in the history of cinema!) and his new voice is so grating to listen to that it makes Gilbert Gottfried’s Iago voice from Aladdin sound like Morgan Freeman.
However, his voice is nothing compared to the new voices for Tack and the Thief for this version of the movie. Tack is now voiced by Matthew Broderick (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Lion King, Election) whose main gimmick is to explain to the audience what is happening onscreen if it wasn’t obvious enough, whereas the Thief is voiced by the late Jonathan Winters (Hee Haw, It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, The Smurfs (cartoon and movies)) who never verbally speaks but his thoughts are now given a voice (Do I need to mention Harvey Weinstein and children again?), anyway, he’s pretty much just doing exactly what Robin Williams did as the Genie in Aladdin, the wise-cracking, pop-culture referencing, modern day talking comic relief…unfortunately they forgot the part where they made it funny.
Other new voices in the Arabian Knight version include Jennifer Beals (Flashdance, Devil in a Blue Dress, The L Word) as Princess Yum Yum, Toni Collette (Emma (1996), The Sixth Sense, Knives Out) as the Nurse/Nanny and the Old Witch, Eric Bogosian (Talk Radio, SubUrbia, Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll) as Phido, and Steve Lively and Bobbi Page from The Princess and the Cobbler as the singing voices of Tack and Princess Yum Yum.
Overall, Arabian Knight is easily the worst version of the movie and was the final nail in the coffin of The Thief and the Cobbler’s legacy for the longest time. It’s nowhere near one of the worst animated films or films in general I’ve ever seen but given the long development history and how one man put his entire life into getting this movie made, the way it ended up is an insult to both animation fans and film buffs everywhere.
This version cuts out several decades’ worth of animation in favor of mainstream animated movie gimmicks that don’t belong in this film at all. You know you can have a movie set in the Arabian Nights without ripping Aladdin off guys.
The destruction of One-Eye’s war machine, the best scene in the entire movie is heavily trimmed down with some of the greatest moments in animation history being left on the cutting room floor is such a severe downgrade to which I have to put my foot down at this. Unlike Fred Calvert’s The Princess and the Cobbler Harvey Weinstein doesn’t even have the decency to include the unused animation during the end credits of Arabian Knight because he’s just in it for the money and is nothing more than a greedy, slimy, pig.
Miramax’s version ruins what used to be silent moments where the animation takes center stage by bombarding them with random cartoon sound effects, extra dialogue, or monologues by Broderick and/or Winters completely distracting from the atmosphere of a scene. This is one of the films responsible for my resentment of Matthew Broderick in certain movies because while he has proven he can be a talented and very charming actor, his role in this along with Godzilla (1998) and Inspector Gadget annoy me so much I just want to break his neck whenever he opens his mouth. No disrespect Broderick, but you need to pick better scripts.
If I can say one positive thing about Arabian Knight is that it handles the scene where Tack and Yum Yum meet the Old Witch a lot better. For one thing, it’s way shorter than in both the workprint and The Princess and the Cobbler where it drags on for a very long time and her original voice is the voice acting equivalent to nails on a chalkboard, the advice she gives them on attacking the One-Eyes makes more sense here than in the other versions, other than that I can’t think of anything else Arabian Knight improved on.
Like The Princess and the Cobbler version, if you have little kids who want to see it then it’s harmless enough. There’s still enough zany Richard Williams animation and imagination in this cut that kids can admire, but there isn’t much in either one of the musical versions of The Thief and the Cobbler for adults.
There you go, Arabian Knight is inoffensive as a movie to show your kids but a betrayal of animation fans and film buffs' expectations with this movie. Now that I have the balls…I will go see the king.
THE THIEF AND THE BLOGGER:
MY HISTORY WITH THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER!
By Nico Beland
MIRAMAX
Original 1997 home video poster for the Miramax cut of The Thief and the Cobbler
I think before we look at Garrett Gilchrist’s fan restoration of The Thief and the Cobbler with the Recobbled Cut, let me take a moment to talk about my history with this movie, specifically the 1995 version that Miramax released which I had just reviewed. The review of Miramax’s Arabian Knight cut that I did recently was basically a full-force critical thrashing of the movie and highlighted the bad dialogue that was written for it, the monologues from Tack and the Thief, and cutting out a good chunk of the film’s best moments to the point where it started off as a normal bad movie review turned into a straight up attack on Harvey Weinstein.
However, as terrible as this version is, I do have very fond memories of watching it as a child and if it wasn’t for this inferior release, I wouldn’t have known about the long production history, the other versions that were made, and especially the Recobbled Cut. The first time I ever heard about The Thief and the Cobbler was through seeing promos for it on VHS tapes of other movies back in the 90s, I remembered seeing it on VHS copies of movies like D3: The Mighty Ducks, Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves, The Neverending Story III, and on some of the Schoolhouse Rock videos and thinking “This looks just like Aladdin!” and also commenting on ZigZag’s appearance looking like a cross between the Genie and Jafar.
I saw the home video trailer with The Thief and the Cobbler title first and remembered seeing the trailer that was made for its theatrical release on a VHS tape of another movie (I think it was Gordy) with the Arabian Knight title and being so confused by it. I kept saying to myself “This movie is supposed to be called The Thief and the Cobbler, what happened, did they change the title?” and wouldn’t get my answer to that question until I went to my local grocery store which had video rentals at the time and I rented a tape of The Thief and the Cobbler and watched it for the first time.
I think I liked it overall back then though my memory is pretty vague, but I remembered being mesmerized by the colorful and stunning animation, the slapstick with the Thief made me laugh (To be fair I was like 5 when I watched it!), and something I definitely remembered doing is making fun of the name Princess Yum Yum which is hands down the dumbest name ever for a princess in an animated movie (Despite that I thought Princess Yum Yum was hot!), and also that she did a lot of spinning during her song sequence…and her singing voice sounds absolutely nothing like Jennifer Beals and sticks out like a sore thumb when you watch the movie.
However, even though I enjoyed it at the time and rented it a couple of times I never owned it on video back then and the movie pretty much faded from memory until several years later when I watched it again in 6th Grade. The nostalgia did come back however the class kept asking the teacher to fast-forward through the songs (That probably should have been my first clue that this movie sucks) and I got an old VHS copy of the movie at a thrift store not too long after, granted this was before I developed my interest and skills in movie reviewing.
Eventually things started to change when I was in high school and I came across The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Cut for the first time on YouTube and was like “The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Cut, I wonder what this is?”. Upon watching it I started to realize that the movie I watched growing up was NOT the movie it was supposed to be with the Nostalgia Critic review of The Thief and the Cobbler permanently cementing the Miramax release as an inferior, bland, and inconsistent dumpster fire of an animated musical that belongs in the DVD bargain bin alongside other garbage kids movies that you released like The Neverending Story III, Pinocchio (2002), and Ella Enchanted, thanks for the memories though Miramax cut but it’s best to keep them as such.
About a year after graduating high school I took some classes on animation and game programming at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment or AIE in Seattle, Washington that were taught by Oscar winning animator Tony White who was one the animators working for Richard Williams during The Thief and the Cobbler’s production, most notably he worked on the sequence where the Thief was going through One-Eye’s war machine while it’s being destroyed to retrieve the gold balls. I remembered many times discussing that movie with him while animating projects on ToonBoom and he gave me a lot of insight and knowledge about the production of the movie.
Even after my time with AIE and Tony I continue to show my affection for The Thief and the Cobbler today for what it truly is, an otherworldly, visually transfixing, and astonishing piece of artistry in both film and animation. I checked out AniMat’s Animation Lookback series on the History of The Thief and the Cobbler among many others, and I watched Kevin Schreck’s documentary Persistence of Vision for the first time fairly recently and was blown away by it, I was in tears when it ended because the documentary saw the film’s production as a great tragedy and revisiting the musical versions for these reviews after watching Persistence of Vision and many online videos about the making of The Thief and the Cobbler, it was painful to put it lightly.
However, the documentary is slightly dated when watching it today because it stated that Richard Williams moved on to becoming an animation mentor and teacher, wrote and published the book The Animator’s Survival Kit, and working on other animated projects never looking back or even speaking of The Thief and the Cobbler ever again. Yes, that was true at the time of the documentary’s release but Williams eventually warmed up to the movie, started discussing it again, and even screened an unfinished director’s cut known as The Thief and the Cobbler: A Moment in Time so he was finally able to get his happy ending with his magnum opus 31 years in the making.
Whew, I think I’ve gone on long enough about my history with The Thief and the Cobbler so I think I’ll end things here. Thanks for listening to me geek out about a movie, I’ll see you at the Recobbled Cut.
THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER: THE RECOBBLED CUT:
FAN RESTORATION IS THE DEFINITIVE “THIEF”!
By Nico Beland
Movie Review: *** ½ out of 4
RICHARD WILLIAMS ANIMATION
King Nod, Princess Yum Yum, Mighty One-Eye, the Thief, Tack, Mad and Holy Old Witch, and ZigZag in The Thief and the Cobbler: The Recobbled Cut
And so, we end this retrospective on The Thief and the Cobbler with a review of arguably the most important version of the film since Williams’ original workprint. I am of course talking about The Thief and the Cobbler: The Recobbled Cut, a non-profit fan restoration of the film created by Garrett Gilchrist, a filmmaker and artist who is noted for being one of Richard Williams’ biggest fans.
While Fred Calvert and Miramax were messing with Richard Williams’ vision and creating a cheap Aladdin rip-off for the sake of making a quick buck (And Harvey Weinstein not respecting children’s intelligence, okay I’ll stop!) animation fans were sharing around the original workprint of The Thief and the Cobbler in secrecy and it ultimately found its way to Gilchrist whom after witnessing what Calvert and Miramax did with this movie, made it his mission to restore the film in a way that’s much closer to what Williams had intended. Using the workprint as a skeleton for this project, Garrett utilized several unused animation footage supplied to him by many of the animators who worked on the film originally, storyboards, rough animations, and even new artwork made exclusively for this version while also using some footage from the Calvert and Miramax versions to fill in the gaps to create what I can gladly call the best released version of The Thief and the Cobbler ever and honoring both the creator and its troubled production history.
While it’s hard to say if the Recobbled Cut is a faithful edit to his original vision or not, it’s definitely a valiant effort and is the closest we could get to a nearly completed version of The Thief and the Cobbler highlighting all of the best moments of the film. No Matthew Broderick! No Jonathan Winters! No Monologues! No Songs! Just traditional hand-drawn animation at its absolute best, you ain’t gonna find animation this lively in a Disney flick.
Again, the Recobbled Cut’s plot is exactly the same as all the other versions of the movie and features the same voice cast from the 1992 workprint so there’s no point in repeating all that. Come to think of it, most of the things I can talk about with this version I had already mentioned in my review of the workprint except this one looks a lot cleaner, has animation and sequences not included in any of the other cuts, and is in much higher quality, at least for Mark 4 of the Recobbled Cut which was released in 2013 and is the latest version of the movie as of 2020.
Nevertheless, this fan project is a love letter to one of the most influential animators in the industry alongside Walt Disney, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, and even Hayao Miyazaki and gives viewers a window into what we could have seen with The Thief and the Cobbler instead of those botched musical messes. The animation takes center stage and is as vibrant as ever and definitely worth watching if you have a really wide TV or computer, the characters leap off the screen and the environments feel larger than life without any cheap Hollywood gimmicks, celebrity voices, or Aladdin callbacks.
The movements and facial expressions of the characters are enough to understand their personalities with very little dialogue. I ended up getting a lot more character out of Tack’s adorably large wide eyes than any of Matthew Broderick’s dialogue in Arabian Knight.
The slapstick and physical comedy with both Tack and the Thief are still executed wonderfully and have timed well to get a laugh. Scenes such as the chase between Tack and the Thief and of course the Thief retrieving the golden balls in One-Eye’s war machine as it’s being destroyed in all its glory.
However, there are a couple of problems with the Recobbled Cut, nothing nearly as major as the Calvert and Miramax stuff but it’s more because while it is a restored version of the movie, it’s still an unfinished movie. Most of the film is fully colored and animated but other times the movie will switch to rough animation or show storyboards, it’s perfectly understandable because Richard Williams never officially completed this movie but sometimes the rough animation and storyboards can be a little distracting at times.
The Thief and the Cobbler: The Recobbled Cut is something every fan of animation needs to see at some point. A visually transfixing spectacle with animation and colors that pop, a unique cast of characters, and well-executed slapstick comedy, it’s like a feature-length Looney Tunes cartoon.
But at the same time, it’s best to know the details about The Thief and the Cobbler’s production history before you watch the Recobbled Cut. I can’t quite recommend it as a self-contained movie but as a tribute to one man’s legacy and all the hard work and effort he put into this movie for over 30 years is quite astonishing and gained a resurgence of public awareness and new appreciation for this lost animated classic.
Final Results
· The Thief and the Cobbler: The Recobbled Cut-*** ½ out of 4
· The Thief and the Cobbler (1992 Workprint)-*** out of 4
· The Princess and the Cobbler (Fred Calvert Version)-** out of 4
· Arabian Knight (Miramax Version)-* ½ out of 4
Sources
AniMat's Animation Lookback: The History of The Thief and the Cobbler
Persistence of Vision Documentary Film
Dedicated to
Richard Williams
March 19, 1933-August 16, 2019
Sources
AniMat's Animation Lookback: The History of The Thief and the Cobbler
Persistence of Vision Documentary Film
Dedicated to
Richard Williams
March 19, 1933-August 16, 2019
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