They’re all cobblers —and so is the story!

The Cobbler (12A) Verdict: Whimsical nonsense Iris (12A) Verdict: Sparkling documentary

MAX SIMKIN (Adam Sandler, below) and his father Abraham (Dustin Hoffman) are cobblers, and so, I’m sorry to say, is this film.

It opens in 1903 on New York’s Lower East Side, where a bunch of Yiddish-speaking men are kvetching, I think the word is, about this and that. When one of them drops in the old saying about not judging a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes, the stage is set for one of the clumsiest and most misconceived bursts o of whimsy you w will ever see.

At first, the f film chugs along inoffensively enough. Switching to the present day, Sandler’s character is a mild-mannered shoemaker living with his old mum, and passing the time of day with the barber next door (Steve Buscemi).

The Cobbler certainly can’t be f faulted for its cast: whatever you t think about Sandler, Buscemi, Hoffman and Ellen Barkin (as a ruthless property-owner) are a classy trio, and Downton fans will be tickled to find Dan Stevens popping u up as the local bisexual beefcake.

The nonsense begins when Max discovers that by pulling on other men’s shoes, he turns into them. This miraccle, conferred by a magical stitching machine in his basement, finally helps him to make something of his own life by enabling him to improve the lives of others.

It also yields a reunion with the f father he thought had abandoned h him, and who treats him, and us, to quite possibly the most excruciating line uttered in any movie this year.

Through his shoe repairs, Abraham tells Max, he has become ‘a guardian of souls’. Heaven knows how Hoffman kept a straight face. As I say, pure cobblers.

A JEWISH New Yorker with a story much more worthy of attention, and a true one to boot, is Iris Apfel, the singular subject of a lovely, affectionate film completed shortly before he died earlier this year by one of America’s great documentary makers, Albert Maysles.

The 93-year-old Apfel is the colourful doyenne of the New York fashion scene, a remarkable free spirit beholden to nobody in matters of taste. But what is especially startling is not so much the idiosyncrasy of her look as her vibrant mind, quite undimmed by her great age.

Her forensic dissection of the foolishness of cosmetic surgery alone makes the film worth watching.