The Cobbler (FILM REVIEW)
The Cobbler
Film Review
by Kam Williams
Adam Sandler Underwhelming as Shoemaker in Muddled Magical
Fantasy
Max (Adam Sandler) is the fourth
generation in a long line of cobblers whose family tree can be traced all the
way back to a business founded by his great-grandfather Pinchas Simkin (Donnie
Keshawarz) in Eastern Europe in the 19th
Century. Max presently plies his trade in a modest shoe repair shop located on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
The bashful bachelor still lives at home and dotes
on his elderly mother (Lynn Cohen) once he gets off work. He’s never dated, but
that doesn’t stop him from ogling attractive passersby while eating pickles on
the street with Jimmy (Steve Buscemi), the barber who runs the establishment
next-door.
Max’s fortunes change the day a neighborhood bully (Method Man)
enters the store and demands that his alligator shoes’ damaged soles be sewn on
the spot. When Max balks because his stitching machine is broken, menacing Ludlow gives him until the
end of day, or else.
After Ludlow
storms out, Max ventures into the basement where he finds an antique stitcher
which’ll do in a pinch. He repairs the tattered, size10½s and slips them on,
since his feet just happen to be the same size.
Lo and behold, Max gets the shock of his life when he magically morphs
into Ludlow. Then,
he starts trying on other customers’ shoes, too, and turns into the owner each
time.
Curious, Max decides to test this newfound ability to literally
walk in another man’s moccasins. He proceeds to make a mess everywhere he goes,
even upsetting his mother by walking into the house looking exactly like her long-lost
husband (Dustin Hoffman) after donning a pair of his penny loafers.
Written and directed by Thomas McCarthy, The Cobbler has to be
considered a big disappointment, given the high expectations set by his impressive
earlier offerings which include The Station Agent, Up, Win Win, The Visitor and
Million Dollar Arm. Unfortunately, the fatal design flaw here rests with
casting, since Adam Sandler tends to fall flat in a flick if he isn’t going
full retard, ala his most successful outings as The Waterboy, Happy Gilmore and
Billy Madison.
Sorry, Sandler simply isn’t very convincing playing a character
with an I.Q.
above room
temperature.
Fair (1 star)
PG-13 for violence, profanity and partial nudity
In English and
Yiddish with subtitles
Running time: 98 minutes
Distributor: RLJ /
Image Entertainment
To see a trailer for The
Cobbler, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQGpDi5mM-4
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