Review: The Cobbler

Adam Sandler plays NY cobbler Max, who runs the family business after his father vanished many years ago, without a trace. One day Max finds an old stitching machine that has magical powers: Any shoes stitched with this machine will allow Max the ability to step into those shoes and take on the outward appearance of the owner of those shoes! So long as they’re a reasonable match for his shoe size, of course. Melonie Diaz plays a pretty local do-gooder Sandler gets involved with, Method Man plays a local gangster, Ellen Barkin is a mob boss, Lynn Cohen is Max’s elderly mother, Dascha Polanco plays Method Man’s moll, Dan Stevens is a male model (whom Max impersonates to try and have sex with his hot girlfriend, of course), Dustin Hoffman plays Sandler’s AWOL dad, Fritz Weaver is an elderly man Diaz is trying to help out, and Steve Buscemi is Max’s friend, the local barber.

 

Adam Sandler had a real chance to take his career to the next level after the excellent dramedy “Funny People”, but he has since gone back to his same old crap, delivering some of his worst films thus far. Sure, there was also the amusing reunion with Drew Barrymore in “Blended”, but we’ve also been subjected to “Just Go With It”, “That’s My Boy”, the lazy “Grown Ups 2”, and of course “Jack & Jill”. Now, along with the box-office flop of “Pixels”, comes this 2015 film that didn’t even get a theatrical release in Australia. The surprising thing is that it comes from critical darling Tom McCarthy, who went from playing a compromised teacher on “Boston Public” to directing the indie fave “The Station Agent”. So, is the writer-director bringing Sandler back into the light, or simply giving us another ‘Adam Sandler flick’? Sadly, while it starts off promising something of the former, it ultimately ends up much more of the latter (with a large helping of a certain Rob Schneider film), and pretty tedious at that.

 

It’s clear that Dustin Hoffman and Ellen Barkin merely signed on because they knew of McCarthy’s previous directorial gigs (Steve Buscemi, meanwhile, needs to stop taking Sandler’s calls). Ain’t no way “Rain Man” is signing on for “The Hot Chick” with magic fucking shoes. He clearly didn’t read the script beforehand. Sandler looks positively miserable in this film, and (unlike the underrated “Reign Over Me”) I’m not entirely convinced it’s an acting choice. No, he just doesn’t look to be having any fun on this one, and I almost don’t blame him going on to make “Pixels” with his buddies after suffering through this. 15 minutes in and I stopped enjoying it, too, despite the very lovely presence of Melonie Diaz. She’s really got something.

 

Co-scripted by Paul Sado (who has small roles in this and Sandler’s subsequent “The Ridiculous 6”), the film is stale shit, as magic shoes turn Adam Sandler into Method Man in some bizarro unholy combination of “Soul Man” and “The Hot Chick”, with irritatingly jaunty, clichéd ‘Jewish music’ score by John Debney (“Gunmen”, “End of Days”, “Predators”), and Nick Urata (“Ruby Sparks”) to add an even more sour note. I don’t even really get the concept of the film to be honest. Sure, the shoes allow you to use someone else’s outer appearance, but you’re still you on the inside, so what’s the point? Yeah…the point is so Sandler can pretend to be a bunch of different people for supposedly comedic effect, but even he doesn’t seem to believe in its merits. It doesn’t end up as bad as you expect, but the scene where Sandler puts his dad’s shoes on to impersonate him and briefly reunite with his elderly mother is a bit creepy and a total waste of Dustin Hoffman. It’s great to find that Fritz Weaver is still alive, but he and the rest of the supporting cast deserve a lot better than this stale affair. There’s not one laugh in it. The closest one gets is Sandler’s reaction to a surprise return, and even that only made me chortle. Terrible non-ending, too. It feels like there’s gotta be way more to it than that.

 

Although this is too bland to be Sandler’s worst film (either his forgotten debut “Going Overboard” or “Jack & Jill”, take your pick), this is still just not good enough. As far as I’m concerned, Sandler deserves to be stuck in direct-to-DVD/VOD until he can muster up enough giveashit to make a film worthy of being seen by a wider audience. I’m not really a fan of his movies, but I’m done being disrespected by each and every new misfire, and I hope his fans (if he still has any) are too. I’ve heard he’s a swell guy off-screen, but his fans deserve better than his contempt and lousy films, hell, we all deserve better. I’d be even angrier if this thing weren’t so damn boring.

 

Rating: D+