The Thief and the Cobbler (+ Recobbled)

Honestly, someone had shown me this movie a few years ago, and I didn't mind it. I'm not going to say I LOVED it, because it wasn't anything exceptional. It was very Yellow Submarine-esque, though, which I appreciated. Plus, the Thief's random thoughts were epic and memorable, to me. Though they made the movie kiddie and goofy, I found them hilarous, personally.

The Nostalgia Critic recently reviewed The Thief and the Cobbler and, put simply, he ripped it a few new ones. Honestly, with his criticism of the Thief's thoughts aside, I couldn't argue with him. The musicals bugged the crap out of me, but I'm also just not a musicals person, generally. At the end of his review, he did say that the 'Recobbled' version of the movie, the one which used final film footage, storyboards, and the like to tell the story it was meant to be told by the orignal director, was pretty good.

After that, I decided that it was time to see what this 'Recobbled' version was all about. I found it on YouTube and I have to say...what the Critic said was right. It WAS pretty good. There was significantly less dialogue - neither the thief nor the cobbler spoke for the duration of the movie, with a few exceptions for each (a few for the thief like 'ow' and '*SCREAM*', the Cobbler with one line at the verrry end)...it was mostly everyone else and the animation itself carrying the story. Scenes were explained better (since they were shown in full), ideas were developed more, and there were no musical numbers anywhere. While I'll admit I missed the thief's thoughts, that's all that I could say was missing. It was so, so much better than the finished (Miramax) version. And it was a bit more mature, I'll say. Who knew that the scene where the thief crawls up a toilet (don't ask) was actually him crawling up into a covert sex scene? And that the backscratcher scene would actually serve a purpose (foreshadowing, omg!)? There was just so much that clicked and it was told beautifully with nearly no words. And it had the definite lighthearted, nostalgic feel of a sixties movie (when the movie was started), with the high-pitched chorus of singers poking in every so often.

But yeah, it was REALLY good!