The Thief and the Cobbler: The Re-cobbled Cut

And this week's Friday night movie has been... The Thief and the Cobbler: The Re-cobbled Cut!

Original image located here. Accessed 4th November 2022

Some background: In the 1960s animator Richard Williams commenced work on an animated film that would later be dubbed The Thief and the Cobbler. Williams would then spend the next twenty eight years (!) working on it. And in that time, he would make a herculean effort into the quality of animation, he would keep adding bigger and grander ideas, would see backers come in & out and miss multiple deadlines. Eventually, Williams would lose control of his work to liquidators and the film would be completed under different hands, becoming two separate films: The Princess and the Cobbler and Arabian Knight.
But it didn't stop one dedicated fan, Garrett Gilchrist, to make a fan edit of the movie using what resources they had.
Now with this series there is one concrete rule: I must watch a movie I haven't seen all the way through. However fan-edits can represent something of a loophole. But in any case, this edit has quite the story behind it and is enough to grab my interest.

In the terms of fan edits, this is impressive: Using what animated footage he could find, Garrett put it all together with the support of those who worked on the original and incorporated test footage and work prints into the edit. Some footage was even corrected of animation errors. Impressive? Yes. A staggering amount of effort? Of course. But is the finished product any good?

Given so much time was spent on the animation, it should come to no surprise that it is of very high quality. The artwork is very beautiful, boasting an arresting art direction and an extraordinary sense of movement that leaves more recent animation for dead. If Williams wanted to make this movie to show what animation can do then I don't doubt it.
But unfortunately that's all there is. The plot is all over the place, there is a lot of random scenes and some sequences just simply drag on. Sure there is style but no much in the way of substance.
Still this film exists as a monument to animation and what a dedicated fan can accomplish. So I will give it that