I will give you my honest opinion, and say that the Recobbled Cut is the best version of this ambitious but excellent film. It is really a shame with what has happened to this movie, to be honest they should have left it as Richard Williams envisioned. Neither of the other cuts felt the same, "Arabian Night" in particular I couldn't get into at all due to the mediocre songs and Jonathan Winters sometimes got on my nerves as the thief. Based on my overall thoughts of this film, this is very underrated and very well done. The animation is done in a somewhat unique style, the backgrounds are sophisticated enough, the colouring is lovely and the character features are quite impressive. The music too is wonderful, I noticed some of my classical music favourites like the Force of Destiny Overture(Verdi),Night on Bare Mountain(Mussorgsky) and Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis(Vaughan Williams) all used to surprisingly good effect. I do think Vincent Price deserves more praise for his voice work for Zig Zag, for it was absolutely superb, so deliciously evil, hammy and arch, very like when he voiced Ratigan in Great Mouse Detective. Also the climax is brilliant, utterly riveting. The characters are fine, Zig Zag is a great villain, and Yum Yum is quite vivacious for a princess. Tack the Cobbler, although he never speaks here, and personally I think it is better that way, is still an engaging enough protagonist, and the scripting is good. While the story is very nice and an interesting concept, there are parts when it feels a little draggy and drawn out. Overall, despite the tinkering it has suffered, this is an excellent movie. 8/10 Bethany Cox

Famously ill-fated animated feature by the renowned Richard Williams, which remains uncompleted despite his having worked on it for almost 30 years!; the film was eventually released in two bastardized versions under the titles of THE PRINCESS AND THE COBBLER (1993) and ARABIAN KNIGHT, while bootlegs – actually a workprint – closer to Williams' original vision have also surfaced (which is the edition I acquired).

It's a typical Arabian Nights fantasy and it's no secret that the Disney Studios 'borrowed' some of its ideas for their hugely successful ALADDIN (1992). Of course, we have a hero (the Cobbler),a heroine (the Princess),a comic-relief sidekick (the Thief) and a villain (the Grand Vizier); the latter is recognizably voiced by the late great Vincent Price (running the whole gamut of emotions in the process),while one of the more interesting aspects of the film is that the titular figures are given no dialogue (except for one silly line by the Cobbler at the very end). Both also have other weird characteristics: the Cobbler's mouth is shaped like two nails set side by side with their points meeting, while the Thief is constantly being followed by a swarm of buzzing flies!

The plot basically revolves around three golden balls atop the King's (shouldn't that be Caliph?!) palace which, if removed, would bring disaster upon the land – and, sure enough, the Thief is after them. Needless to say, the Grand Vizier called Zig-Zag (with faithful vulture companion Phido in tow) not only craves power for himself but the Princess' hand, too, and he secretly connives with a warring people intent on conquering Arabia to this end. As expected, the visual design is extremely colorful and amazingly detailed (especially effective is Williams' clever use of perspective) – though it's hardly rendered justice by the fuzzy quality of the copy under review (to check out the film as mangled by other hands is clearly out of the question for me).

At 96 minutes, THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER – with its slight plot and even thinner characters – does tend to drag a bit (especially during the climax and the Thief's protracted hair-raising stunts to survive a conflagration),but the latter's amiable antics throughout and Price's agreeably hammy rendition more than make up for any such deficiencies. For the record, many other notable actors were roped in for the project over the years – with sometimes more than one person being engaged for the same role (the King, for instance, was voiced by both Anthony Quayle and Clive Revill and the narrator was either Felix Aylmer or Ralph Richardson)!

The Thief and the Cobbler was 30 years in the making, was released in a couple of different chopped up forms, then someone took all the footage they could find to try and create a version of the director's original vision, called the Recobbled Cut. There are a few versions of this fan-edited version; I saw the most recent, Mark 4, and that's the version I'm reviewing.

The film is made up of finished animation pulled from video, some 35mm finished footage, some work prints, test animations, half done sequences, and still sketches. In spite of this miscellany, the story of a kingdom under threat from a thief, a one-eyed warlord, and Vincent Price, has a fairly coherent and engaging story.

The quality varies from moment to moment. Some scenes are fully finished, but many look like there are details missing, and color and quality vary from moment to moment. But much of what is there is truly stunning. There are wonderfully clever effects, like a top down, shot of a chase over a tiled floor that reveals an optical illusion. Parts have a Fleischer Brothers surrealist aspect, while the finale, the wildly elaborate destruction of a vast war machine, would have been one of the greatest animated sequences of all time had it been fully finished. Even in its current form it's incredibly impressive.

It's hard to know how the final film would have looked. The director was apparently constantly changing and reanimating sequences (which lead to cost and time overruns that got him thrown off the project),so even the "finished" parts might not have been final. But I salute the guy who put this together and hope that someday he or perhaps Disney (who may have more footage in a vault) will create something even closer to the director's vision.

Well worth watching for animation fans who can deal with the flawed presentation.