This is painful to watch and only leaves me feeling a bitter after taste in my mouth! Don't waste your money, watch the "fan edit" on YouTube!!! The DVD reproduction is so bad, I can't believe that HMV would be selling it at £22 in the high street!! It isn't even worth £7 on here! The standard of the transfer makes it just about interesting if it was free in a cereal box (which it was in America). This film has been spoilt and it is hard to watch knowing a mans life work could be taken away from him and reduced to this!! Richard Williams is a gifted artist and deserves better!!
The colour reproduction is very bad, it might as well be a bootleg or pirate copy!! I am sending mine back today!
There are more than enough blogs and web sites and reviews on other amazon sites about this films unfortunate history. In short what I want to relay to everyone here is that what your buying is the incomplete version. I find it hard watching a film that has such a negative reputation as this one. Richard Williams spent over thirty years working on this masterpiece of animation art only for the men in suits to step in and take away the project from Williams at its last hurdle in production because it was in the red. Disney took over the project and cynically cut it up and re voiced it crudely with cheap songs and new dialog over explaining everything. It was originally filmed in a ratio of 2:35 and that is not the ratio here! The DVD resolution for this edit is poor and so what we have is just not even reasonable. Roy Disney did try to convince the Disney company some years ago to restore the film as Williams had wanted it but naturally the pitch failed when Roy left the company. Don Hahn is apparently working with Williams now in trying to restore the film with Disney but who knows how accurate these rumours are. We all know Disney should restore the film, the company is supposed to represent the finest talent in animation and if it all boils down to money, they know they would make it back. By all means buy this film to get a feel of what was created but remember this is not a true reflection of the artists vision, if it was we would be spell bound by genuine animation magic from one of the 20th centuries most gifted artists and so all criticism rests now at Disney's door in restoring it. I actually have every faith they will. If you desire to know more look up the films history and watch a truthful edit of this on YouTube, titled The Thief and the Cobbler Re-Cobbled, it at least attempts to fulfil Williams original vision and remember, this film came before Aladdin!
