The sky is blue. Adam
Sandler movies are bad. These are two
immutable facts of life, and yet, every now and then, there are exceptions to
these rules. Sometimes the sky takes on
various twilight hues. Sometimes Sandler
tones down his obnoxious persona to make a film that is actually worth watching,
like Punch Drunk Love. The
Cobbler would like you to believe that it belongs in the sky of a setting
sun, but really, it does not take a hard look to realize that it is a shade of
teal, only barely distinguishable from a bright summer’s day.
Following the life of Max Simkin (Sandler), a cobbler in a
downtown neighborhood who hates his life due to its monotony and inconsequence,
while simultaneously lamenting his and his mother’s abandonment by his
father. Upon discovering an old sole
stitching machine in his shop’s basement, Max discovers that he can take on the
form of anyone by slipping into their shoes, so long as they have been mended by that machine.
Now Max can live as other people and see how they live.
Despite this somewhat interesting premise and adequately
coherent direction, the film fails to really find a footing as far as having a
discernible plot. At first, Max just
messes around, using his newfound powers for mischief and for random acts of
silliness. Then, the plot shifts into
needing to steal funds after Max’s mother dies.
Then the plot shifts once again to the prevention of an evil scheme by a
real estate tycoon to kill an old man who refuses to leave his home. And through all this, Max never really
develops as a character. Shifting plot
focus wouldn’t be such an issue if Max had any character to him whatsoever, but
most of “Max’s” screentime is portrayed by actors other than Sandler, doing
their best Sandler impressions. This has
the inherent consequence that Max never has any sort of character arc, making
the whole narrative entirely pointless.
This is almost a shame, considering how unusually subdued Sandler plays
this role.
Ultimately, though, that restraint only offers the illusion
of sophistication, as the primary sources of the film’s so-called humor are
something to which Sandler is no stranger.
During the course of his various transformations, Max embodies a
stereotypical black gangster, a caricature of a transgender woman, and the
cliché of an extremely handsome ladies’ man who is secretly gay. For a film that has the supposed premise of
walking in the shoes of others, it has very little understanding of any
perspectives beyond those that are white, male, cisgender, and straight, and
uses Max’s transformative qualities to paint a portrait of everyone except for
the hegemony as strange, worthy of mockery, or just scary based on the color of
their skin.
The Cobbler is
shot and directed as an indie-circuit dramedy piece, but at the end of the day,
it’s just another trip through the meandering and casually prejudiced world
that is Adam Sandler’s film career. This
film may not be a Happy Madison production, but it might as well be; for all
its purported class, this one is just as terrible as anything else its star has
been a part of.
What would you say are Adam Sandler’s diamonds in the rough,
if he arguably has any at all? Leave
your thoughts in the comments below.
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