The Thief and the Cobbler (1993)'s comments

quote:

Richard Williams devoted the greater part of his adult life, over a quarter of a century (from the mid 1960s until the early 1990s), to making The Thief and the Cobbler. Regrettably, the studio financing the project in its later phases grew uncomfortable with his slow progress and took the project away from him. A new director was put in charge, and he threw out much of the material Williams had produced, abandoning that man's vision, and then created something entirely different with material of his own. Fortunately for lovers of animation, an admirer of the original director's work, Garrett Gilchrist, has attempted to reconstruct the never released movie. Although it is impossible to say what Williams' final version of The Thief and the Cobbler would have been like, since he never completed it, Gilchrist has, at the least, given us something that resembles that unrealized film. That said, the sources of his version are variable. As a result, many scenes are pristine while others are of inferior quality. Some even consist, in part or whole, of unfinished animation or story boards. As inadequate as this approach is, since it gives the viewer only a taste of what could have been, it is the best version of the film we have. My review is, consequently, of this and not of the mutilated remnants of the movie that have been commercially released (as The Princess and the Cobbler and Arabian Knight).