Welcome to the triumphant return of Bad Movie Review! Since it’s award season, Margaux suggested we take a look at The Cobbler, from Oscar-nominated director Tom McCarthy, who inexplicably made both this and Spotlight in the same year. This movie is weird in so many different directions, so let’s get right into this shit.
Trevor: For the first few minutes of The Cobbler, it actually feels like a Tom McCarthy film. McCarthy is the director of intimate, human films like The Station Agent, The Visitor, Win/Win, and Spotlight, the best film of 2015. The prologue here is well-shot, and uses Yiddish well. Then we cut to Adam Sandler and the movie becomes 97 minutes of WTF. I HAD SO MANY QUESTIONS ABOUT EVERYTHING.
Margaux: Okay, we have directly opposite opinions on the opening, though we are pretty much on the same page for everything that follows in The Cobbler – I wrote two and half pages of questions as my notes, a lot of my questions which I’m not entirely sure I want the answer to because this movie is so confused about what it wants to be. But the opening, I thought from a cinematic standpoint, it looked like a McCarthy movie, but it sounded like a string of cliches; “I am only a cobbler” and “you only truly know a man after you’ve walked in his shoes.” I thought this opening (and explicit mission statement you’d assume it’d make good on) was going to come back in some way, or at least we’d hear the resolution of their initial problem, but like the rest of the movie, it’s just a series of events that really don’t mean anything.
Trevor:I think the reason the prologue worked for me is because it made me think that in some alternate universe, Michael Chabon wrote a killer 150-page novella with this same premise. Okay, the prologue is pretty expository, but so is the first 30 minutes of the film.
You can tell Adam Sandler is in Serious Mode because he has a beard and he looks mopey. And honestly, the schlubby outfit he wears throughout The Cobbler is probably pretty close to what he wore to the red carpet premiere of the film.
Margaux: You mean the overcoat an elderly customer gives him? It makes him look a flasher. And that Harry Potter rip off scarf was the single, ugliest accessory of clothing I’ve ever had the misfortune of looking at for 90+ minutes.
Trevor: That was the longest scarf I’ve ever seen.
Margaux: From the outset this movie worked in opposition, the score of The Cobbler want you to think it was a comedy, but Sandler’s sad sack face was definitely not in on that. For last couple years I’ve become convinced that Sandler and Kevin James have a secret suicide pact they’re just waiting to make good on.
Trevor: The perpetually jaunty score made sure we never took anything too seriously, even an accidental homicide, which we’ll absolutely get to later. But that’s as good a segue as any to talk about Method Man, who seemed to be cosplaying as 50 Cent, replete with chin-strap beard and grill. The fact that the only black man of note in The Cobbler is a drug dealer with a grill who hits his girlfriend is pretty indicative of the film’s weird racial stereotyping. Leon (Method Man) was basically a Grand Theft Auto character come to life.
Margaux: As a long time Wu-Tang fan, I always forget Method Man’s real name is CLIFF “Method Man” SMITH. Anyway, Leon has a lot of strange lines, not to mention the ways in which Sandler’s character chooses to use Leon’s gators, which is basically holding up a nerdy white guy for his shoes. Leon also calls America, “Ameri-cola,” which I thought was going to lead more Leon-isms, but this movie is a collections of would be interesting vignettes that don’t add up to anything other than a giant mess. I will say that the scene where Leon fights himself only showed that Method Man is an underrated actor, that’s the only positive comment I wrote down.
Trevor: I had the same thought about Method Man – The Cobbler really allowed him to show some range, from playing the menacing, condescending Leon, to playing Max as Leon, giving him a chance to impersonate Sandler’s neurotic delivery, which he did nicely. Plus, he had the correct reaction to meeting a clone of yourself: attack immediately. That notwithstanding, it doesn’t excuse the fact that all the black people in The Cobbler are thieves, and Max (Sandler) is Jewish and eats pickles in every goddamn scene.
Margaux: Not to mention the only other minority in the movie, a transgendered woman, is trotted out to freak out/scare characters and then alternately get made fun of. And her introduction was particularly gross, when Max (Sandler) starts to feel her up and then makes a move to reach down her pants, only to recoil and say “I’m not a pretty girl,” was fuckin’ icky. But the obsession with pickles throughout the movie is the most off putting part, it’s one thing to have the two main characters – Max and the barber next door, Jimmy (played by Steve Buscemi) – is one thing, but Max goes to a nightclub as one of his more attractive customers and the bartender offers him a pickle-tini, vodka and pickle juice, and he actually drinks it! GUH, WUT. You should be fired for making that drink.
Trevor: And then he almost bangs the guy’s girlfriend! Which is tantamount to rape. He didn’t go through with it, but not because of any moral objection, but because he’d have to take off Emiliano’s shoes and reveal himself. That was a gross scene, but not nearly as creepy as the “date” he went on with his mother. I know that was supposed to be sweet, but it was weird and awkward as hell. (Lynn Cohen, though, did fine work as Max’s mom, I’ll give her that.)
Margaux: Oh my God! What a trick fuck! I know it was supposed to be touching that Max gives his Mother her final wish of having dinner with his Father, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances, but instead the whole thing made me deeply uncomfortable. Paging Dr. Freud. Max was a very confused and bitter character whose motivations sometimes had admirable intentions, but how he gets there isn’t logical, and more often than not bordered on rape, racism, or incest.
Trevor: Structurally, this movie was a fucking mess. It was almost all subplots, barely moved forward by the world’s most passive protagonist. It was only in the last half hour, when Max had to help the elderly Mr. Solomon keep his apartment, that he showed any initiative. Granted, I had problems with this storyline too, namely that living in an apartment building by yourself sounds fucking awesome. Also, Max becomes Danny Ocean all of a sudden and it doesn’t work at all. Suddenly he’s a smooth operator, quick with a quip? I don’t buy it. (Fun fact: one of the goons, Jeffrey, was played by Glenn Fleshler, the goddamn Yellow King.)
Margaux: And one of Leon’s henchman was played by Grizz Chapman from 30 Rock, he’s doing only slightly better here than Dot Com’s appearance in Sarah Palin’s very sad spoof of 30 Rock. I digress though, at about the 65 minute mark I was no closer to even guessing how this movie would end, after the hilarious accidental murder and the multiple false imprisonment charges, I assumed some sort of legal repercussion would come down the pipeline, instead we got the reemergence of gentrification subplot with Melonie Diaz, who uses Max’s name WAY too often in casual conversation. And in case you were worried that Adam Sandler wouldn’t end up with a woman who is too smart and beautiful for him (and also too young), rest easy friends! Sandler don’t care if you’re an Academy Award-nominated writer-director, YOU WILL NOT DIMINISH HIS MAN-BOY FANTASY.
Trevor: And if that were the end of the film, Max helping Solomon keep his apartment (Ellen Barkin is the heavy?), The Cobbler would mainly be a magical realist misfire. But the last ten minutes are, as WeGotThisCovered.com put it, a special kind of awful. After the reveal that Jimmy the barber (Steve Buscemi, not bad) is actually Max’s father (Dustin Hoffman???), the movie takes an even sharper left into WTF-ville. You wanna talk about this shitshow? Holy shit, what a weird ending.
Margaux: I feel like The Cobbler had beaten you down so much by the end of the movie, when the reveal finally happens, you’re just like, “oh yeah, of course, why not.” At that point, I was honestly more curious about what happened to Leon’s body than Max’s Daddy Issues. They even managed to tie in the fascination with pickles, namely pickle juice, which helps your body recover after you’ve jumped bodies, ummm sure whatever you say Hoffman! Just when you think it couldn’t get more convoluted, it just throws more crap on the fire. Speaking of crap, what adult says “what the crap” all the time like Max does? It’s like he has Tourette’s.
Trevor: That was a pretty blatant attempt to keep a PG-13 rating; they knew no one wanted to see The Cobbler, and with an R rating this would have actually had a negative audience.
So I guess cobblers are like superheroes of a sort? Which makes me think that Max’s coat and scarf were supposed to be representative of a superhero’s costume and cape, which, BOO. At first I was (understandably) annoyed by this inane, nonsensical turn of events, but now I hope this spawns a 7-film Cobbler franchise.
Margaux: Sandler still has 4 more movies left on his deal with Netflix, wouldn’t be surprised. But the most interesting part of the last 10-15 minutes was the other reveal, that barbers, cobblers, dry cleaners, etc are all in part of secret society. Yet, they do nothing but make a throw away and another semi-insensitive and unfunny comments about dry cleaners aka asians being untrustworthy.
Trevor: Again: great plot for a short Michael Chabon book, in the vein of Summerland.
Margaux: Agreed. I would’ve thought the ending reveal would be a great opportunity to tie in the beginning, but nope! Go fuck yourself, you get a drone shot of NYC. It’s crazy to think that McCarthy went on to make Spotlight directly after The Cobbler, but he must had to do something to wash the horrid taste of this movie out of his mouth. I had to watch The Bachelor, which was goddamn Shakespeare compared to The Cobbler.
Trevor: The good thing is, Spotlight is so goddamn good that it basically erases The Cobbler from existence. McCarthy is so talented that this film will luckily end up as a footnote. Let’s just hope he learned not to do this (whatever “this” is) again. I have faith in him; even The Cobbler isn’t bad enough to shake that.
Margaux: The more movies he makes, the further The Cobbler will be buried on his IMDB page, it sure does look funny between Win/Win and Spotlight though. It’s like, wait-what? What type of agent talks you into this? What did the original script look like before Sandler fucked it up with his laziness? This was supposed to his next Punch Drunk Love, so much for that. At least one of them left this with a career.
Trevor: I definitely found myself asking what the genesis of this film could possibly have been. In spite of all The Cobbler’s problems – its scattered narrative, unlikable protagonist, and weird racial attitudes – it wasn’t a complete disaster. Buscemi, Hoffman, and Method Man were all good in their roles, and did the best with what they had. Don’t get me wrong, though; this…this was not a good movie. You wanna talk stars?
Margaux: I’ll even it give it to Dan Stevens as Emiliano, I thought we were going to go somewhere with him and the fact that he’s in the closeted club DJ, but I guess they’d offended enough people and just let that narrative thread go. Probably for the best.
This movie was a fuckin’ mess, and this coming from someone who watched Showgirls in the same weekend as The Cobbler, should’ve had at least one character vomit out of anger. Cobbler raises more questions on how they managed to wrangle such a talented cast into such a talentless and humorless movie, it feels unfair to give this movie a star count, but I’ll give it the same stars I gave it on Netflix, one. And even that feels generous.
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