Some directors should just stick to realism.
Director Thomas McCarthy‘s best films, “The Station Agent” and “Win Win,” might tread toward the whimsical, but they mostly traffic in recognizable characters in relatable situations. But then there’s “The Visitor,” in which a constipated old white guy learns to love life with the help of some accommodating people of color, and you can feel the sweetness overpowering the filmmaker’s better instincts.
Cloying as “The Visitor” was, it barely scratches the surface of wrongheadedness, cutesiness and borderline racism on display in “The Cobbler,” a would-be comedy that clumsily combines magic shoes, daddy issues, gentrification, gangland violence and Adam Sandler, the latter doing that low-key, shut-down style of acting he delivers every time he’s working for a real director and not one of his Happy Madison flunkies.