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The Cobbler (2014)


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Edgy MD
May 23 2015 08:26 PM

Adam Sandler plays the title role, a shoe repairman who discovers a magic stitching machine that allows him to assume other persons' identities when he puts their shoes on. Hijinks, as they tend to do when you hear klezmer music, ensue.

Writer/director Tom McCarthy writes and directs.

Frayed Knot
May 25 2015 06:26 AM
Re: The Cobbler (2014)

Ordinarily my first response here is that you lost me at, 'Adam Sandler plays ...'
But that it's a Tom McCarthy project could be enough to turn things around.

Edgy MD
May 25 2015 06:58 AM
Re: The Cobbler (2014)

It's a sad reality that, while we decry the caterpillarian lowness of Adam Sandler's act, when he does endeavor to try a more honorable project — Punch Drunk Love, Love Reign o'er Me, and this — it disappears quickly in the marketplace. Then he returns to the sewer and America handsomely rewards him. We can tut-tut that his latest project appears to be a borderline hate crime, but YOU MADE HIM, America. And YOU MADE HIM DO IT!

That bit of anti-moralizing moralizing aside, the film — categorizable as Jewish magic realism — is something of a departure for McCarthy as well but it ends up being hit-and-miss. Some of the plot turns are clever, and the portrayal of a dying Lower East Side tradesman-and-merchant community is authentic enough (though far from pitch perfect), but some of the protagonist's choices are head-scratchers and the themes are a little Disney facile. Certainly not a wasted evening, though. It kind of feels like a John Sayles movie, in that the you're getting a bigger picture of good-and-bad American values in an ordinary, low-budget/low-scale life, but you don't realize it unless you think about it.

What have you all been watching?

Frayed Knot
May 25 2015 07:19 AM
Re: The Cobbler (2014)

I suppose I sometimes fall into the trap of not making enough of a distinction between Adam Sandler movies and movies with Adam Sandler in them.