A bad movie from Adam Sandler is hardly a shock. But a bad movie from Thomas McCarthy is something of a surprise: The writer-director is responsible for The Station Agent, The Visitor, and Win Win, each of them to varying degrees intimate, thoughtful, and charming.
And now we have The Cobbler, his first foray into the supernatural, and it does not look good. Adam Sandler plays the title character, who one night discovers that by putting on the shoes that belong to his customers he can become them, briefly. It’s basically Freaky Friday, but with shoes. And while trailers can be deceptive, the reviews coming out of the Toronto Film Festival were even less promising than these two treacly minutes. Wesley Morris of Grantland wrote: “A movie like this, in which not a single scene comes together, in which almost nothing makes you laugh or cry or think, reminds you that it’s truly a miracle when movies work at all.”
