It stars Adam Sandler and, yes, cobbler’s in the title. Make your own jokes, because they’re otherwise lacking here: this botched fantasy – in which Sandler’s downtrodden Max discovers a magical stitching machine that allows him to literally walk a mile in his customers’ shoes – collapses amid its attempts to reshape a notionally sincere script to fit an A-list heel. An intriguing Jewish-heritage angle is soon overwritten so a bodyswapping Sandler can gawp at boobs; thereafter, it shrugs through boring squabbles with slumlord Ellen Barkin towards a will-this-do? punchline about cobblers being “guardians of soles”. Such indifferent material may now be expected from Sandler; coming from Tom McCarthy, writer-director of 2003’s cherishable The Station Agent, it’s an almighty shame.
