The Cobbler (2014)

[Edgy MD]

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]

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]

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]

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.