The Cobbler is barely a movie. To describe it more accurately would be to call it a collection of scenes that people filmed and others assembled in the hopes that you would accidentally pay for a ticket while trying to see Chappie. Don’t do that. The Cobbler isn’t trying hard enough to earn your dollar, even inadvertently. It’s barely trying hard enough to keep Adam Sandler awake for the length of its production.

Sandler plays a cobbler who inherits a magic sewing machine, which allows him to resemble the owner of whatever shoes he repairs. Beyond this starting point, The Cobbler leads down several underdeveloped subplots, simply dropping those ideas once the script finds a more tantalizing story to follow. At first, Sandler’s Max Simkin is simply trying to keep the family business afloat as neighborhood stores are closing and being sold off. Soon, Max slips on Method Man’s shoes and discovers he can (queue record scratch) walk in another man’s shoes. Max uses his ability to assume the identity of a criminal in order to rob people without ramifications, because everyone here is scared of the large black man. Max sneaks into the home of a sexy woman while wearing the attractive Dan Stevens’ shoes, scares children while wearing a dead man’s shoes, and generally pulls highly unethical gags as an attempt at mildly enjoyable humor.

This bouncing between ideas sends The Cobbler’s tone crashing into walls. When the film begins, Max’s connection to the family shoe repair shop has been waning. His father had abandoned him and his mother years ago for unspoken reasons, and his now elderly mother shows some signs of dementia. There are discussions of shifting cultural identity in a changing urban landscape, and Melonie Diaz as an activist against gentrification; however, by the end of The Cobbler this progresses into an under-explained “Gotcha!” crime caper involving strong-arm drug dealers and a murderous slum lord. With some clever editing, The Cobbler could be recut into a PG family comedy, or a raunchy Happy Madison laugher, but its lack of commitment to any one element makes all aspects fail miserably. There’s no cohesion to the humor, no narrative details worth your attention.

This is a movie so convoluted with half-pursued sort of stories that it assumes the sprawling, plotless feel of a movie like Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice, but without any insight into the types of people it portrays or the atmosphere it depicts. Instead, The Cobbler is comfortable in delivering caricatures, platitudes, and pratfalls in place of jokes. Every character is drawn so paper-thin they more closely resemble stereotypes than human beings. Adam Sandler is sad. Method Man is a criminal. Lynn Cohen is old. Ellen Barkin is a bitch. And Melonie Diaz has a heart of gold so maybe if Sandler plays his cards right he’ll get a kiss before the credits roll.

Among the many misguided choices made in The Cobbler, the strangest misfire is how the movie underuses Adam Sandler. When Max Simkin slips on someone else’s shoes, rather than have Sandler act like the other actors, more often it’s the lesser-known actors that play Sandler’s character pretending to be their character. I like Method Man fine as an actor. Sometimes he’s great (How High, HBO’s The Wire), sometimes he’s just ok (How High, Red Tails). But in a comedy as broad as The Cobbler wants to be, it’s simply funnier and easier to follow Adam Sandler pretending to be Method Man, than Meth attempt playing Sandler playing Meth.

Most of all, this is a sad misstep for Tom McCarthy. The writer/director of two indie gems (The Station Agent, The Visitor) as well as a co-writer on Pixar’s Up, most recently wrote the cloying Million Dollar Arm. My sincere hope is that The Cobbler doesn’t launch a Shyamalanian bottoming out of his work. McCarthy’s next film Spotlight is a promising drama about the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize winning coverage of the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandals starring Michael Keaton, Rachel McCadams and Mark Ruffalo. There exists a glimmer on the horizon. But no one should see The Cobbler, not even as a curiosity. It’s not a good-bad movie, it’s a bad-bad movie. The Cobbler is completely unsure of what it wants to be, or how to go about executing it.

The Cobbler Video Review

Sometimes going into a film with zero foreknowledge allows for a deeper understanding and more open viewing experience. It also means that one’s gut reaction is going to end up being the overall feeling one’s left with. My gut reaction after a cold-viewing of Ryan Piers Williams’ X/Y was that the movie felt like it was written as a vehicle for an under the radar filmmaker to give himself the spotlight. Almost immediately after having this thought Williams’ name appeared on the screen declaring him director, writer, and star. I think I laughed out loud. The film’s press notes (which I read later) describe it as a snapshot of a few New Yorkers caught between generation X and Y. This seems dubious. Williams’ motivations in making a film he and his wife, America Ferrera, could star in surrounding emotional intimacy among urban young folk seems to fall squarely into generation Y. And believe me when I say, I’m not faulting him for it. It’s the rally cry of the Millennial generation that if they see a hole in the world, they set out to fill it. Williams has created an insightful, if maybe unflattering, view of his peers, in a film that is expertly crafted and performed.

Williams stars as Mark and the film opens on him and his girlfriend Sylvia (Ferrera) having particularly sad sex. Their connection is fraying, proven when the disappointing sex turns to a full-blown fight. In their next scene Sylvia admits to having cheated on Mark out of loneliness and his emotional distance. Mark leaves, eventually landing on his friend Jake’s (Jon Paul Phillips) couch. The film then splits into four sections. First Mark, who’s arguing with his agent about the direction of his screenplay and not wanting to sell out for a studio deal (another distinctly gen Y trait of artistic integrity over a solid paycheck.) At night he parties with Jake and their friend Stacey (Amber Tamblyn) with whom he flirts, but who he soon realizes has her own relationship problems back at home.

Next up is Jen (Melonie Diaz), recently unemployed and best friend to Sylvia. The two get together for some spa pampering and gossip, Jen rambling on without ceasing about all the latest men in her life. Sylvia endures it until her own news comes out about her and Mark’s separation. Jen does what most single girls baffled by their happy friends’ behavior would do: she immediately criticizes Sylvia telling her to make it right. Sylvia denounces Jen’s advice on the basis of her own love-life being a joke. Hurt, Jen takes off for a shopping spree to soothe her hurt feelings but first swings by last night’s hook-up to pick up a bag she left. His wife answers the door. She buys bags of clothing, taking them home to her already overflowing apartment, the emotional metaphor all too obvious.

Jake is the focus of the next segment, starting with sex in a dirty club bathroom with a stranger. He dumps her unceremoniously onto the floor after, taking off without a word. A model and artist, Jake still struggles from a semi-recent break-up, unable even to appreciate the advances of a nice girl he meets at a photo shoot. Desperate (as each of these characters are) for a connection, Jake pushes boundaries with a close friend, both of them giving in if only to feel desired.

Sylvia acts on her own feelings of need in her segment (which of course also starts mid-sexual encounter, which all of the segments do in some way or other), keeping up an affair with co-worker Jason (Common), the one she cheated on Mark with. It becomes obvious to her the relationship is purely sexual, and she needs to choose if she can live with that. Meanwhile, her edge at work is waning as she gets more and more distracted by her problems at home.

As I said before, Williams may have made the film as a vehicle for his own talents, but because he clearly has talent, it’s hard to hold this against him. The film’s writing focuses on the more negative aspects of relational difficulty, and as all the characters are close-knit friends, it does give off the impression that no one is happy anywhere. The film’s NYC location is obvious but not essential to the story, though Williams’ story is distinctly centered around the urban experience.

The thumping music and large lettered title cards distributed throughout X/Y are distinctly GIRLS-like, another argument for its gen-Y status as it is emulating the most Millennial show out there. But arguments for what generation the characters belong to aside, what Williams and his press team should have said about X/Y’s title is that it represents the chromosomes that make up people. And that people need each other, and there are ways in which that need leads us to hurt each other and ourselves. That truth transcends generational categories.

Williams and Ferrera (who produced) make a great team and have created a relatable, albeit one-sided, look at not only a group of young people, but at a basic human condition. It’s the character’s response to this condition that makes the film interesting, but it’s their assumption that this is somehow harder for them or a problem more unique to their generation that keeps the film from having true depth. It’s not harder, it’s not unique, it’s all part of being human. But maybe we just talk about it more, in which case I hope making this film proved truly therapeutic for Williams and company.

X/Y is out in theaters and on VOD March 6. 

On New Year’s Day 2009, Oscar Grant, a black 22-year-old Bay Area resident was pulled off a BART train and taken into custody by a police officer. Unarmed and defenseless, he was shot in the back and killed on the Fruitvale BART station train platform in front of dozens of passengers. The incident was captured on a cell phone camera and went viral, making national news. The shocking footage opens director Ryan Coogler‘s debut feature, Fruitvale Station, a dramatization of Oscar Grant’s last day on earth which aims to humanize the shamefully under-discussed news story by spotlighting quiet, ostensibly meaningless moments in his final hours. This intimate, personal perspective on Oscar’s story illuminates the magnitude and cultural significance of his death in a way no news story ever could.

The decision to open the film with the raw footage is brilliant, providing weighty context for every scene that follows. After the clip, we loop back from New Year’s Day to New Year’s Eve and the beginning of Oscar’s (Michael B. Jordan) day. He’s bickering with his girlfriend, Sophina (Melonie Diaz) in their bedroom, trying to convince her that a recent affair was a one-time-only mistake. Diaz and Jordan have real chemistry, and their speech dynamic feels natural. When their daughter Tatiana (Ariana Neal) knocks on the door, and Oscar hurries to hide a zip of weed before letting her in. He clearly ain’t no saint, but who is?

Coogler’s unobtrusive camera follows Oscar throughout his day as we’re introduced to the pile of mistakes he’s accumulated. He’s lost his job at the grocery store, he’s an ex-convict (which we discover in an unforgettable flashback scene), and he’s got an explosive temper, but he clearly loves his family and is trying hard to shake his demons for their sake. His life is a mess, but he’s determined to clean it up.

Jordan respects the role and convinces us that he was born to do it. He embraces the ugliness of his mean streak while convincing us that he’s a caring family man deep down, a challenge that would be easily flubbed by most young actors. He’s got the chops to be truly great. Octavia Spencer is characteristically captivating as Oscar’s mother, Wanda Grant, a soft-spoken, caring matriarch with an exhausted patience for his bullshit (she’ll never forget how Oscar going to jail affected her granddaughter.) Still, she loves her son, so when he tells her that he and Sophina are going to San Francisco to watch the fireworks she thoughtfully suggests they take BART instead of driving.

Coogler’s passion for his subjects is felt throughout the film, and he shows that he’s a director of taste and discipline. The key to the film’s success is making sure we get to know Oscar as a person, and he keeps his priorities straight. There are occasional moments of high drama that jar the tone of realism (Tatiana clairvoyantly asking her dad not to get on the BART train is totally unnecessary), and the post-Fruitvale scenes feel a little bloated, but for the most part Coogler makes all the right moves.

Returning to the titular train station for the film’s third act is as terrifying as you’d imagine. Watching the raw footage the first time was hard enough, but now we feel like we know Oscar inside and out, which makes the reenactment of his death simply earth-shattering. The fact that this dramatization is somehow more gut-wrenching than the raw footage is a testament to the power of cinema.

When I got out of the San Francisco press screening for Fruitvale Station, all I wanted to do was rush home, kiss my wife, and tell her I love her. I darted out of the theater in a panic, a sense of urgency compelling me to walk faster, faster, faster. I wanted to get home so bad I could burst. Then, I remembered something that stopped me cold. My ride home? A BART train. Fruitvale Station will rattle you to the core.

We spoke to star Melonie Diaz (Be Kind Rewind, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints), who plays Sophina Mesa, Oscar’s real-life girlfriend, in a tiny roundtable interview the day after the film’s premiere in Oakland. She talked with us about her chemistry with Michael B. Jordan, what she thinks of the Bay Area, what it was like meeting Sophina, the tremendous support the film’s received, and more. Check out the edited transcript below.

Read More Fruitvale Station Interviews:

Michael B. Jordan and Octavia Spencer
Ryan Coogler
Ahna O’Reilly

What was your reaction to first reading the script, and how familiar were you with the Oscar Grant story?
I’d never heard about the story before. I’m from the East Coast, so I was completely infuriated. How could something like this have gone under the radar the way that it did? I [watched] the Youtube video, and it pissed me off even more. I Skyped with Ryan (Coogler), and he’s obviously a young person with so much passion and conviction. He knew the story in and out, and [his reasons for wanting to make the movie] were better than anything I’d heard. I said I want more than anything to be a part of this project.

You and Michael have great chemistry. How was it working with him?
We were lucky—we were able to come to the Bay a little earlier and we’d just hang out. My biggest pet peeve is when you work on a movie and you meet somebody and they’re like, “Alright, you’re husband and wife. Act!” It was really important for us to have time spent. There’s something really simple about it, but it makes all the difference. We went to a basketball game, cooked together, ate food, and drank a lot— little things like that where you really get to know a person.

What do you think of the Bay?
I freaking love the Bay! I had the best time here. I mean, I was working all the time, but I like the vibe and there’s a community here. Before I came people kind of gave it a bad rap.

(laughs) What did they say?
Oakland does have a big crime rate. It’s kind of unfortunate that that’s the front page of the city. It’s a great freaking city.

What was it like meeting Sophina (Mesa, Oscar Grant’s girlfriend)?
Intense. I get emotional about it. It sucks. I think she’s as much a victim as Oscar is. She’s an example of so many women who have to raise their family alone and have to tell their daughters what happened to their dad. It’s heavy.

When did you watch the film for the first time?
I watched it with my mom on my computer.

How was that compared to watching it with an audience at Sundance and Cannes?
Completely different. Watching it by myself I was more self-consumed like, “Ah! I don’t want to watch myself!” Every actor does that. Watching it at Sundance, Cannes, and even yesterday (at the Oakland premiere), I think it’s somewhat the same. People are equally angry and moved, and that’s why the story is universally important. I think people are really identifying with Oscar. Everybody knows what it’s like to be 22, be a mess, not know who you are, be in a difficult relationship, and try to make all the things that are wrong around you right.

Were you expecting the crowd at Cannes to react the way they did?
No, because I know the French community is quite fickle. They’ve booed a number of films over the years. The French…their taste is so high class, so there was a lot of pressure going in. To have a standing ovation for ten minutes and have people respond in a different country…it kind of made us feel like we were on to something special. Also, I think the French like to agree with everything that’s wrong with America, and the movie touches upon the things that are wrong in this society right now, whether it’s racial profiling or gun control.

What was your approach to the script?
I wanted to approach it from the family dynamic side. The movie is about social injustice, but it’s also about family and what it’s like to be in a relationship and have a daughter. I wanted to show that [Oscar] was a family man and he was a good person. I gave my dentist a ticket to the movie and she emailed me afterwards. She said, “I can’t wait to go home and hug my son.” That’s so powerful, and that’s what we wanted to show. He’s a person we all loved.

Talk a bit about Ryan and what it’s like working with him as an actor.
It’s so rare for me to work with a director so close to my age. He’s actually younger than me. That’s never happened before. He has more conviction and passion in one finger than all of us. It kind of blows my mind. The process of making this movie was not easy. There were a lot of emotional days where we’re all screaming, crying, angry, but you feel incredibly safe. He protects you. Even on a low indie budget movie where you have no time, I never saw him sweat. You never want your director to sweat. Working on a project like this where you’re so invested and going through these emotional ups and downs…you’re a little bit of a wreck. It’s nice to have somebody on your side like him because you know no matter what he’s going to have your back.

I remember the day before all the BART scenes I emailed him saying I was scared. He wrote me this long, eloquent email of reasons why I should not be scared. He doesn’t have any time, and he’s writing me this long…he has my back, and it’s really refreshing for a young director to have that much care for his actors.

What was it like when the film won the awards at Sundance?
I was like, “OH. MY. GOD.” This movie is so topical. I did this movie called American Son, which is about this kid’s last day before he goes off to war. People didn’t want to buy it after Sundance. It was almost as if they were in shock. They didn’t really want to deal with the issues. So, when Fruitvale won, I was like, wow, people actually want to have a conversation about these things that are affecting us on a daily basis. I wasn’t sure, even while making the movie—we’re taking a risk, making a movie about something that may not [get everybody to respond.] To have people respond the way they’ve been responding is completely bonkers.

Do you approach a role as a real person the same way you would approach a fictional character?
I think when you’re playing a real person there’s not as much room to play. You have to respect that person for who they are and be honest about what they bring to the table. It’s not really about you. It’s about bringing their qualities out.

The beautiful thing about the movie is that you show that you show Oscar, flaws and all. Your character is sort of like a surrogate for the audience. There’s a great scene where you’re angry with Oscar, pointing out all of his flaws…but you end up forgiving him.
[When] I met Sophina, the one thing that was most apparent to me was how much she loved him. That was the love of her life. That was her best friend—she knew him better than anyone, I think. I truly believe that, and Ryan believes that, too. I don’t know what it is to lose somebody like that, but I know what it’s like to love somebody like that. When you love somebody like that, your love is unconditional, and that was the through-line for Sophina. She’s a loyal, loving mother and companion. I’m not married and I don’t have a child, but I think after getting to know her, that’s the foundation of who she is.

When you first read the script, was there a scene that stood out to you?
The scene with Octavia and Mike in the jail. That’s the scene that made me want to do this movie. I still get emotional about it. It’s so fucked up! The scene that makes me cry every time is the scene with the dog. That’s when I start to crumble. It’s foreshadowing the inevitable death [of Oscar.]

How do you suppress your expectations when heading into a project like this?
I don’t think you should ever expect anything. I don’t care if you’re in a 50 million dollar budget movie. It’s about the work. It’s about making the best movie you can possibly make. If you get the accolades, great. But if not…whatever. People shouldn’t be in it for that. That’s why I think this movie is so successful, because nobody cared about that crap. We actually cared about Oscar.

Fruitvale Station opens in theaters this Friday.

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