The Thief and the Cobbler Recobbled Cut Review

Title: The Thief and the Cobbler (1993)

Director: Richard Williams

Cast: Vincent Price, Anthony Quayle, Hilary Pritchard

Summary: A princess and a shoemaker unite to save the kingdom by restoring three gold balls to the tallest minaret.

Sup all it's Ari, and I'm here to remove your nostalgia goggles on old movies. So with this movie, there are honestly no words to describe it. It's known more for the creation being over thirty years rather than the story itself, so it was hard for me to find a full copy online. And lucky for me I did, I found the full Recobbled Cut for Richard Williams' The Thief and the Cobbler.

So where do we even begin? Well, it's hard to talk about this movie without mentioning how long it took, however, everyone has covered it so instead we're going to try to cover the film alone. To me, at least I didn't grow up with it or hear about it until 2008 when I was getting interested in animation with the Nostalgia Critic. For this film, it's a hunt for a lost treasure of animation for me. So how was it?

The plot for this film is weak. If you haven't seen it, I suggest doing that but if not that's alright since we'll be talking about spoilers. Oh, so some of you haven't seen it and want to read on? You live dangerously; I like that. Anyways, yeah the plot is weak. Magical balls protect the city, a thief takes them, and hell breaks loose. That's what confused me, how did the thief not know what would happen if the balls were removed? Am I nitpicky so soon? Probably, but that's cause this movie is riding on the coattails of its rep. It's also very dull, I didn't feel a connection to the characters except for Zig Zag, but it felt like many ideas mashed together for one plot. For me, the best way they could have made it linear was by having it be consistent:

Magic balls protect the kingdom, they get stolen, so it's off to find a way to get them back, the villain holds onto the balls to make a deal, and in turn, the prophecy happens.

That itself may have been a more significant help to the movie, heck even when the balls vanished if they were never shown until Zig Zag is in front of One Eye it might have helped the film. The title characters barely interact, and when they do, it's at the beginning and the end. Zig Zag to me was good cause not only Vincent Price but also that his character was so eccentric that it was hard not to look away. From what I remember with snippets or clips, they showed the princess as incompetent and same with the king. While in the one I saw, the king tells her to go look for a way to solve the problem and she does it willingly. Where was Disney? Her father in most of those clips was sleeping; however, it showed that he cared when he was fully awake.

While I saw this movie, I tried my best to keep an open mind, and yes, the film is beautiful but being pretty alone won't help. It needs charm and funny moments and makes you feel invested in the story. I did have a giggle when they referenced the “Night on Bald Mountain” segment from Fantasia, cause they were playing the song. Other than that, there weren't any funny moments in the film.

I will be fair, the visuals, when they are fully detailed, are beautiful. The way Williams had everything hand animated gives the illusion of 3D, and it looks so well done. When it's not, it reminds me more of an animated short. The designs for the characters are unique, with Tack being all white until he reaches the desert. Even with the thief, it was humorous that the flies followed him everywhere to show that he's never bathed before.

With Williams being the director, it could go to one of two ways. As an animator alone, his work is beautiful to the point where the animation is seamless to this day, and the most prominent example is Who Framed Roger Rabbit. As a director, the piece is beautiful and makes the story feel complete, Prologue his 2015 animated short does that beautifully, and this short film is only 6 minutes long. For him to have this movie to work, there should have been another director with Williams to co-direct.

All in all, this is a boring movie with a concept that would have been beautifully done if it was in the right hands. Its visuals are stunning when they are and rushed when they seem like they shouldn't. To me, the reason why this film isn't forgotten is because of how it's creation is talked about so much. The Thief and the Cobbler is a passion project that was completed but also failed. It was completed by the Recobbled Cut being the closest to William's vision, to me it failed in two ways. It failed as an overall film because of how perfect Williams wanted it to be. The other failure is that this movie, no the process of creating this film has been told so many times that it has turned into a myth.

This movie has an A for effort, but a D for execution. With that, I'm giving The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Cut a D+.

So for the next movie, we’re going to go to a classic film with a look from a book that was recently published.

Till then keep those rosy goggles on till I rip them off your face. See you in the next review!