Hollywood Presents

2010-09-30

by Darknut

The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Cut

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=18B0CA620B61D076

I had never heard of this movie before. Wikipedia paints a disturbed picture of how this film had troubles getting produced and was eventually butchered by Disney in order to call it finished and release it to video in the 90s. So apparently this YouTube version is closest to the original vision, and the point is to show how it is different from the Disneyfied video a few people have seen.

Something about this movie feels like it's from the 60s or 70s, and it might take a little patience since neither the thief nor the cobbler speak. A lot of it is pure slapstick. So I can understand how Disney would prefer that it appealed to a more modern audience. But in the Disney version, the scenes they added match very poorly to the original style, which I think is a shame. And it bothers me how they were determined to change the personalities of the characters. The Disney formula of liberated girls interspersed with sappy songs has become trite and contrived since the 90s.

Aside from the animation being extremely fluid in general, there are several impressive scenes where the entire screen is animated: not just characters on a background, but a whole new background for every frame as the view shifts perspective. You might need to be an animation fanatic or student to be able to appreciate this. The "war machine" scene near the end is a bit tedious, but otherwise the movie is worth seeing and/or comparing to other versions.

This whole situation might serve as a good lesson in how movies are really made through the Hollywood machine. Pay attention, kids.

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