“The Cobbler” recently came to Netflix. It’s an Adam Sandler movie that was released last year to virtually no fanfair. Apparently, there were problems with the production of the movie - or as I heard from people, and according to headlines of articles that I did not read. I don’t put too much stock in rumors like that. I like a movie to stand on its own merit.
Anyway, it popped into my Netflix queue. I watched it last night. Not to bad. I enjoyed it.
I guess it could be classified as an independent film, as I did not recognize any of the production studios that made it. Just by viewing the film, you could tell that it had a low budget, but the budget was enough to make a quality film.
It actually had some famous actors. Besides Adam Sandler, there was Dustin Hoffman and Steve Buscemi. There was also a score of other actors that you would recognize by face, if not by name.
This film falls into the same category as Adam Sandler’s other film, “Click”. Wherein he plays a cobbler in present day New York city - the son of a long line of cobblers reaching back generations - who is working the family store all by himself. It’s just him and his elderly mother. He’s eeking along.
He discovers a magical cobbler stitching machine down in the basement of the store. He knew it was there the whole time, but just didn’t have a need to use it, until his regular stitching machine breaks.
He realizes that when he uses the stitching maching down in the basement to repair a pair of shoes, if he puts those shoes on, he turns into the owner of the shoes. He doesn’t have their memories or experiences, he just takes on their physical characteristics - but with his own clothes on.
The discovery here was done nicely. It was believeable and it gradually built in a logical manner - unlike other swithceroo movies where you just don’t believe it, or the actors suddenly start acting illogically or detrimentally.
He experiments with this new power at first, and gets into a couple jams, and then he uses the power to get out of the jams, with overall success. He acts like a human, trying to see how much he can get away with at first, but stops short of causing any harm or damage. There are some times he does some questionable stuff with this power, but you can see him rationalizing it - and I would challenge anyone else to not at least contemplate the same actions if you had this power.
There are some sad moments through the movie, and the human relationships are believeable and realistic.
I have three issues with it:
[ul]
[li]There is a blantently racist scene. When he had the option of choosing any number of other peoples’ shoes, he chooses to use a black man’s shoes to do a robbery. There is another scene where he dons a pair of shoes owned by an Asian man, and he starts talking with an Asian accent. But, this was because when he changed into that other person, he took on all physical characteristics.[/li][li]If you think about Dustin Hoffman’s character, man he was a dick! He let his only family languish in near poverty for decades, just to keep a secret - especially when it turns out that he apparently has vast resources. He could have somehow clandestinely helped.[/li][li]If he really wanted to use this power for good, he rarely donned the most effective persona in certain situations to get the job done.[/li][/ul]