The Graduate (1967)

Directed by Mike Nichols
Written by Calder Willingham and Buck Henry, based on the novel by Charles Webb
Starring Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, Katharine Ross and William Daniels

A disillusioned college graduate finds himself torn between his older lover and her daughter.

There is no denying that this comedy from 1967 is a classic. It is filled with memorable scenes, perfect performances and top-notch writing. This film has withstood the test of time and still finds a sense or relevance among younger audiences.

But good God, is it annoying. Filled with stupid, annoying and irrational characters who do stupid, annoying and irrational things. No character has any redeeming qualities and even as a twenty-five year old, I find everyone's actions childish and literally the worst possible thing they can do in the situations they find themselves in.

Starring a definitely-not-twenty-year-old Dustin Hoffman and a not-much-older-than-Dustin-Hoffman Anne Bancroft, I found their characters rather unbelievable. Their affair, however was more believable than the love between Hoffman and the daughter of his lover. 

More time was spent on establishing the affair than was spent on the entire part of the film in which he "fell in love" with the daughter, let alone the 30 seconds it took for him to fall in love with her. Which made the entire plot eye-roll worthy.

All that being said, you're probably expecting my to give this an extremely low rating. Despite all of it's flaws, and there were many, I found that the performances overshadowed them. Yes, they were all stupid, annoying and irrational. But they all had a humor to them that made the experience enjoyable. It's easy to see why this film is a classic.

My Rating: 6/10

The Cobbler (2014)

Directed by Thomas McCarthy
Written by Thomas McCarthy and Paul Sado
Starring Adam Sandler, Method Man, Steve Buscemi and Dustin Hoffman

Max Simkin repairs shoes in the same New York shop that has been in his family for generations. Disenchanted with the grind of daily life, Max stumbles upon a magical heirloom that allows him to step into the lives of his customers and see the world in a new way. Sometimes walking in another man's shoes is the only way one can discover who they really are.

Throughout the run-time for this movie, the entire thing feels like it was conceptualized to be a short film, but some Hollywood big-wig got a hold of it, slapped Adam Sandler's name to it and told them to stretch it out to forty-five minutes longer than it should be. Or perhaps they just added too much to the plot.

Rather than changing the focus of the movie as many times as they did, they should have kept to the plot of the first two acts. A cobbler finds that one of his machines has these magical powers, then uses said machine for his own advantage, but soon finds himself in over his head. 

Had they stuck to that script instead of making him use his powers for good in a completely convoluted and unnecessary way, this could have been a better movie. But they decided to over complicate things to the point where it felt like the director didn't know what it was about.

Regardless of all the problems I had with this movie, I feel we remember Adam Sandler movies as being worse than they are. Now I'm not talking about "Jack and Jill" or another painfully bad movie. But on average his movies are -- well, average. 

I feel that there is so much hate thrown towards them because they aren't as good as "Billy Madison" or "Happy Gilmore". Would I watch "The Cobbler" again? No, unless it was on TV and every other channel was some TLC reality series. But I wouldn't go so far as to say this was a terrible movie. It's just average.

My Rating: 5.5/10