giuseppelentini-42197

What is the definition of a masterpiece? A flawed piece of visual art that showcases a distinct style over any substance, aimed at enthusiasts, or a crafted work where every part fits in the Whole, to create a coesive result that's more than the mere sum of its parts, and it's meant for anyone that can resonate with the content?

I find the first definition too restrictive, specific and inaccurate, so we will go with the second one:

Has the Thief and the Cobbler, at his core, an intriguing, logically formed plot, well written characters, thought provoking themes, memorable events, symbolic values or an engaging narrative structure?

The answer is no, to all these questions.

The only thing it has, it's the insane level of animation quality, married to a striking artistic visual style. And that's all there is to it, really.

I don't blame the producers of this mess for the idea of trying to transform this endless work in progress in a finished movie, but it wasn't possible.

For three reasons:

1) The plot is very simple, yet it gets interrupted constantly by a collection of "Buster Keaton" alike animated shorts, badly strung together, in an effort to grasp an unreachable technical perfection. It also goes in convoluted territory, with useless side characters and meandering sub plots that went nowhere. The plot devices are random and the reasons to make the plot move forward are quite silly. It all ends with the most infuriating deus ex machina I ever saw, completely ridiculizing all the villains (as if they weren't sketched caricatures enough), and giving an abrupt closure to a love story that was never earned, nor properly written.

2) The characters are all one dimensional and, with the exception of Zig Zag the Grand Vizier, not developed at all. The thief steals and the cobbler, well, cobbles. It doesn't help that both characters are silent (so I understand the reasons to try to voice them in the released versions). The princess does the Disney princess impression just barely, the Sultan sleeps, and the rest of the cast it's just there as a prop for the animation antics. And what was One Eyed exactly, why he wants to destroy stuff? We will never know.

3) It's clear that it's a 60s idea developed in the 70s, and the rest of the 20 years of development time was spent solely on animating the thing. The straightforward and sketchy fairy tale narrative, the hippie naming conventions, the lame "adult" innuendos a la Bakshi, the silent movie style, all point in this dated direction. The designs inspired by Escher, Yellow Submarine and russian animation didn't help it either, compared to the styles in vogue by 1993.

So, did the two versions with songs ruin this complete wreck? I don't think so. If anything, whoever took the project from Williams tried to make it watchable and sellable by 90s standards. The songs aren't more out of place that the thief's overlong shenanigans, frankly.

Does the recobbled version restores a long forgotten classic? Nah, it just adds all the unfinished material to an already overlong and disjointed feature of aimless film making and manic search for perfection.

Probably the most watchable version, oddly enough, is the Greek film students attempt, as it follows the workprint, restores only the almost finished material, and doesn't add everything AND the kitchen sink to it.

But, for all the technical merits of The Thief and The Cobbler, and daring artistic vision, it's really quite clear that the needed material, to transform this failed experiment in a masterpiece, simply isn't here. Williams was a great animator, but a lousy director, a worse project manager and should have left the writers alone. There, I've said it.

In spite of the over enthusiatic reactions of the fan base on this anime, I have to say that not only it is very dated, but it's not very good even compared to other scifi animes of his time. The plot shows promise in the first episode, but by the third it actually devolves in a formulaic, repetitive and mundane story that gets nowhere. It's full of deus ex machina moments and illogical coincidences too, to the extent that it actually reminded me of the saturday morning cartoons of yore. The characters are very stereotypical, one dimensional, and heavily inspired by Cat's Eye. The great music and nicely animated action scenes are the only elements that can be saved from the general mediocrity, but those are not reasons enough to recommend this time curio to anybody.

This has to be the swan song of the classic mecha vs mecha genre, and as such it ends up paying homage to the classics, while at the same time breaks the mold from them and evolves in a very original and interesting direction. The story is very intriguing from the start, even if a bit confusing in his exposition at the beginning, but it gets better. A lot better. In fact it has to be one of the best written screenplays in the whole genre. The animation style is also very solid, and every character has a motive, a backstory, and some of them even have dramatic developments during the 4 episodes. If you'll watch it, you'll wonder by the 3rd episode how on earth they'll manage to end this overarching story in one episode only. Don't worry, it actually escalates quickly to a very satisfying and gritty finale. I recommend this anime to all fan of 80s animation done right, I frankly consider it to be quite underrated.