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All-Reviews.com Movie/Video Review
Mr. Deeds
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 out of 4
Review by Susan Granger
1 star out of 4
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Back in 1936, Frank Capra made the classic comedy "Mr. Deeds Goes To
Town" with Gary Cooper as Longfellow Deeds, a New Englander who inherits 20
million dollars and wants to give it to needy people, while Jean Arthur co-stars
as a big-city reporter who tries to figure him out. To compare this loosely
based sequel to Depression-era original is more than insulting; it's blasphemy!
On the other hand, there are Adam Sandler fans out there who not only have never
heard of the original, they've also never heard of Capra or Cooper. So this
lame-brained comedy must have been made for them. Yet, there's a second problem:
the difference between 'simple' and 'simpleton.' Longfellow Deeds is a simple
man, meaning he's without guile or deceit. Sandler plays him as a simpleton, a
person of weak intellect, a fool. Sandler's Longfellow Deeds is a pizzeria
owner/wannabe greeting card poet in Mandrake Falls, New Hampshire, who inherits
$40 billion from a distant relative. When this infantile, goofball Deeds gets to
Manhattan, he not only becomes Gotham's most eligible bachelor but he's also the
rags-to-riches target of villainous power monger Peter Gallagher and Winona
Ryder, a scheming tabloid-TV reporter named Babe whose nasty motives are duly
suspected by his sneaky butler, John Turturro. Sure, Deeds gives away his money
- but not to the needy - and, predictably, the dude's folksy virtue triumphs
over big-city avarice and cynicism. Heavy-handed director Steve Brill and
screenwriter Tim Herlihy butcher Robert Riskin's original screenplay, unable to
decide whether it's a parody of corporate culture, a slapstick comedy or a sappy
romance. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Mr. Deeds" is a dimwitted,
dumbed-down 3. I urge you to rent the real "Mr. Deeds Goes To Town."
Copyright © 2002 Susan Granger
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