Adam Sandler Walks in the Shoes of Method Man (and Dustin Hoffman) in First Trailer for 'The Cobbler'
Though they’ve come with less frequency over the past few years, Adam Sandler’s turns toward the dramatic are often surprisingly rewarding, showing audiences that the professional goofball can handle nuance and subtlety. See: Punch Drunk Love, Reign Over Me, Funny People and even The Wedding Singer.
In writer-director Tom McCarthy’s latest film The Cobbler, Sandler goes semi-dramatic again. Here, he plays a lonely cobbler who stumbles upon an old machine that allows him to assume the identity of others — even the dead — by simply slipping into their shoes.
The film, which features supporting turns from Method Man, Dustin Hoffman, Dan Stevens, Ellen Barkin, Melonie Diaz and Steve Buscemi, met with dismissive (and even outraged) reviews following its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Andrew Barker of Variety called the film “A slow-motion zeppelin crash that starts as a dull-edged fable, and then spirals further and further out of control without ever growing more exciting or interesting.”
Ouch.
However, Yahoo Movies’ Brian Raftery had some tepid praise for the movie, writing that “its spirit is worth defending, if for no other reason that McCarthy and Sandler were trying to create the kind of movie you rarely see nowadays: The grown-up fable, one that tries to walk a line between magical realism and recognizable humanism.”
Audiences can decide for themselves when the film — which currently has no release date — opens some time next year.
