The Thief And The Cobbler
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DVD details
Actor: Jennifer Beals, Voices of Vincent PriceBrand: Genius
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Collector's Edition, Color, Digital Sound, Dolby, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 72 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-11-21
Audience Rating: G (General Audience)
Studio: Miramax Family Films
DVD Reviews of The Thief And The Cobbler
DVD Review: Every effort has been spared on Weinstein's DVD of this lost labor of love
Summary: 2 Stars
Richard Williams' legendary labour of love The Thief and the Cobbler is one of those films that was just born unlucky. After spending three decades working on it, the animator over-ran the budget and was taken off his own picture, with the gaps filled in by cheap Thai and Hungarian animation that sticks out like a sore thumb, many of the original voice cast (Anthony Quayle, Donald Pleasance, Felix Aylmer, Sean Connery) redubbed, musical numbers added and the film retitled The Princess and the Cobbler in a version that only seems to have ever been released in Australia (sadly, the Australian DVD is panned and scanned from the original Scope ratio, as is this release). Then, to add insult to injury, Miramax re-edited that version even further from Williams' intentions and retitled it Arabian Knight to cash-in on the success of Aladdin, leading to a film intentionally designed as anti-Disney animation being marketed as the very thing its creator was rebelling against.
The Miramax cut presented here is quite painful to watch at times, not least because of the horrendous non-stop stream of subconciousness mutterings from Jonathan Winters dubbed over the silent character of the Thief, best described as the cinematic equivalent of sitting next to a loquacious drunk with exceptionally bad breath on the last bus home. At one point Roy Disney tried to restore the film to its original conception, seeking out the lost and unused sequences and talking about getting Williams to finish the film his way - only for the Disney-Eisner feud to see the film's champion leave the company and the film in the Weinstein's tender mercies.
The film would never have been a masterpiece: for all it's visual audacity there never seems to have been enough of a story. Williams was clearly more interested in animating increasingly elaborate and intricate sequences involving the Thief than in filling out the plot points, but what's especially astonishing is that in an incredible act of cinematic vandalism many of the most visually inventive parts of the film hit the cutting room floor even though whole sequences had been completed - indeed, even much of the truly extraordinary work in the climactic destruction of the war machine has been cut. While some of these scenes were relegated to the end credits sequence, in some cases their omissions leads to massive continuity problems and gaps in the plot. To make matters worse, the original footage seems to have disappeared, preventing its partial restoration. Still, I suppose we should be grateful (though surprised would be a more appropriate reaction) that they didn't replace Vincent Price's voice as well.
There are surviving moments of visual genius, particularly a brief but amazing chase sequence across chequered and patterned floors and backgrounds that is all the more impressive for being entirely hand-drawn (Williams started work in 1968 long before computer animation was even a glimmer on the far horizon), but they're never enough to compensate for the fact that you don't really care about the characters or the story around them. The Cobbler in particular is a bland and uninteresting character, all the more so for being mute (or at least in the original version until the last line of the film, originally delivered rather clumsily by Sean Connery, though both released versions gave him voice-over dialog - in this Miramax cut the Cobbler is voiced by Matthew Broderick). The work print, filled out with storyboards and pencil tests, gives some impression of what has been lost and how much better this could have been, though that is not included on this disc (widely circulated at conventions, it would at least been a gesture to animation fans to include it regardless of its poor quality). But whichever version you see you'll be left with a film that frustrates and astounds to varying degrees.
Sadly, while they have reverted to Williams' title, Miramax's DVD is exactly the same `Arabian Knight' cut with no restored footage or extras. In fact, it manages to be even more disappointing than their laser disc release - while that at least was in 2.35:1 widescreen, this every-effort-spared barebones release doesn't even have a widescreen transfer. Shameful.
Description of The Thief And The Cobbler
The film tells a story which takes place in an oriental city from the tales of thousand and one night. It covers the friendship of a thief knowing all tricks to survive in the city and a poor cobbler/shoemaker who has to struggle in order to live. Studio: Genius Products Inc Release Date: 11/21/2006 Starring: Voices Of Vincent Price Jennifer Beals Run time: 73 minutes Rating: GBestsellers in DVD
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