The Cobbler

“The Cobbler” is almost fascinatingly awful enough to recommend. If one subscribes to the theory that you can learn as much from a bad movie as from a good one, this one’s a master class in what not to do. What starts off as purely harmless mediocrity piles on the narrative and filmmaking mistakes to such a degree that it’s like watching a train wreck…that bursts into flames…and then another train crashes into it. There’s something perversely fascinating about a film that doesn’t just go off the rails but does so in such misguided fashion. And it’s all the more remarkable when you consider that “The Cobbler” was made by an undeniably talented filmmaker, the man who has given the world great films like “The Station Agent,” “The Visitor,” and “Win Win.” This film is so inferior to those works that it almost disproves the auteur theory on its own.

It starts off innocently enough. Max Simkin (Adam Sandler) is a quiet, kind cobbler in a New York neighborhood that is being drained of its personality by big business. He keeps to himself, managing his little shoe shop, and taking care of his mother since dad disappeared years ago, leaving him a story that he still doesn’t really feel is his own. Max is an observer, someone who sees lives going on around him, like the gorgeous model couple outside his shop, but he doesn’t really have to call his.

One night, working on a pair of shoes dropped off by an outspoken criminal named Ludlow (Method Man), Max’s machine breaks down. He digs an old one of his father’s out of the basement and repairs the shoes. He slips them on, looks in the mirror, and, bam, he’s Ludlow. The transformation is purely superficial in that Max is exactly the same on the inside but everything on the outside, including the voice, is of the owner of the shoes. Of course, Max uses the magical machine on every pair of shoes he can find, spending a bit of time in the shoes of the DJ (Dan Stevens) with the model girlfriend, and even pretending to be his disappeared dad (Dustin Hoffman) so mom can see him one last time.

For half the film, “The Cobbler” is a well-intentioned but dull affair—a modern fairy tale about stepping into someone else’s shoes that doesn’t do nearly enough with its thematically dense high concept. The piece has no thematic resonance at all because writer/director Thomas McCarthy and co-writer Paul Sado fail to get beyond the superficial. We don’t learn anything about the people that Max becomes. In fact, the film is almost defiant in its judgment of books by their covers. He becomes the genetically blessed Stevens and a girl hits on him. He becomes his dad and his mom treats him as if he is her lost partner. “The Cobbler” suggests that walking a mile in someone else’s shoes will make you look like that person but not actually experience anything else about them.