THE COBBLER (2015)

Genre: Drama/Comedy
Director: Thomas McCarthy
Cast: Adam Sandler, Cliff ‘Method Man’ Smith, Steve Buscemi, Dustin Hoffman, Dan Steven, Ellen Barkin, Dascha Polanco, Melonie Diaz
Runtime: 1 hr 38 mins
Rating: NC16 (Some Nudity and Violence)
Released By: Shaw
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 30 April 2015

Synopsis: Max Simkin (Adam Sandler) repairs shoes in the same New York shop that has been in his family for generations. Disenchanted with the grind of daily life, Max stumbles upon an heirloom that allows him to step into the lives of his customers and see the world in a new way. Sometimes walking in another man's shoes is the only way to find out who you really are.

Movie Review:

Adam Sandler may be better known for his crass humour, but the comedian has of late been consciously developing a more dramatic oeuvre with acclaimed filmmakers such as Judd Apatow, P.T. Anderson and Jason Reitman. And so, the fact that ‘The Cobbler’ is co-written and directed by Thomas McCarthy, the respected indie filmmaker of mild-mannered comedy-dramas like ‘The Station Agent’, ‘The Visitor’ and ‘Win Win’, might suggest that this belongs more to the latter category of Sandler’s films; alas, while it does boast of a surprisingly nuanced performance from the man, ‘The Cobbler’ isn’t particularly amusing, interesting, or affecting.

Those who have seen Sandler’s more family-friendly works ‘Click’ and ‘Bedtime Stories’ will likely recognise a similar fabulist streak in McCarthy’s premise, which he developed with Paul Sado. Playing the titular fourth-generation shoe repair man on New York’s Lower East Side, Sandler’s Max Simkin discovers that he can transform into its owner if he uses his great-grandpa’s old sewing machine to stitch up any pair of shoes; and by that we mean looking like someone of a different age (including one that is ostensibly dead), or different race, or different gender or even different gender orientation. A Yiddish-language prologue set in 1903 gives some context of where that magic came from, but is otherwise irrelevant.

There’s no denying that Max’s gimmick is mildly amusing at the start, especially seeing how Sandler uses his newfound gift to play some harmless mischief on the barber next door (Steve Buscemi) and get away without paying at a fancy restaurant. But the joke quickly wears thin and McCarthy has few ideas how to sustain it. Having Max impersonate his estranged father (Dustin Hoffman) in order to offer his mother reconciliation before she passes away may seem like a poignant way to go, but McCarthy pays it scant attention; instead, he indulges in a dumb crime-caper story involving a local gangster named Ludlow (Method Man) who intimidates local businesses and physically abuses his girlfriend.

Ludlow is but one of the vignettes that collectively revolve around Max’s encounters with the rest of his denizens of the Lower East Side of New York, and McCarthy tries to bring these various loose threads together with an underdog story that sees Max help an activist (Melonie Diaz) save a tenement resident from being evicted by a criminal slumlord (Ellen Barkin). Not only does it feel haphazard, the sum of all these little parts does not make for anything more compelling; indeed, one never quite gets what the point of Max’s family heirloom is or how his discovery of its magical ability is supposed to be some coming-of-age process for him. That is also why we can scarcely believe the coda, which is supposed to be some poignant twist about where Max’s dad has been all this while, but which only manages to come off baffling at best.

Against such a creaky setup, Sandler tries to make the best out of an uninspiring character. Granted that Sandler has a knack for playing the Everyman that we can easily identify with, but the very premise has the effect of sidelining his character, and by extension himself, by letting other actors try to play Max. That clearly isn’t the same as getting Sandler to play a variety of different persona, which we suspect his fans (us included) would be much, much more, entertained watching him do. None of the other supporting actors make any impression – not even Barkin, whose villainous role is one-note and caricatured, or Hoffman, who could very well do the extended cameo in his sleep.

Clearly, McCarthy had aimed at something whimsical with this magical-realist fable, but ‘The Cobbler’ is a misstep that will neither satisfy his fans or that of Sandler’s. There is no real magic beyond its basic conceit of a cobbler who is able to see the world in the shoes of others, its charms too slight whether as a modern-day fairytale or a drama about finding one’s place in life (you know, what they say about ‘if the shoe fits’). As it turns out, this is an ill-conceived fit for an A-list comedian as well as an indie director, a patchwork that is cobbled together without much inspiration or coherence. 

Movie Rating:

(Neither a moving coming-of-age drama nor a whimsical modern-day fairytale, this magical-realist fable about a cobbler who can literally step into the shoes of others is only ever so slightly amusing)

Review by Gabriel Chong