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| Mr. Deeds movie review by David Richards |
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 | | David Richards | | Winona Ryder and Adam Sandler star in Mr. Deeds |
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Grade: C
I've never seen Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. My Capra experience goes about as far as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and the movie where the angel gets his wings.
I've seen enough of his work, though, to guess that Capra's version can't be any worse than Mr. Deeds, the newest remake which stars Adam Sandler, an actor who 90 percent of the time plays the same type-cast role but with a different name.
In this film, his name is Longfellow Deeds, a small-town pizzeria owner who gets willed $40 billion and ends up in Manhattan.
There's really no other plot here, except for the fact that along the way Deeds falls in love with a first untrustworthy reporter (Winona Ryder) and has to deal with a conniving lawyer named Cedar (Peter Gallagher).
It's all the same thing we've seen in other Sandler movies. There's a speech scene at the end, resembling the one in Billy Madison, and the chemistry between Ryder and Sandler is just as it is in almost all of Adam's other movies: non-existent.
There are a few high-points that are worth mentioning, though.
There is a scene, for instance, in which Sandler is impressed with his New York living quarters and recognizes that his voice echoes inside of it. The scene could have stopped there, but it continues, and when Sandler asks his entourage around him to join in with the echoing, it creates one of the films highlights.
Another big laugh is the scene in which Sandler saves a bunch of cats from a multi-story building fire, and throws them one by one out the window and onto the emergency trampoline. The cats go bouncing off the trampoline and onto other places. One lands in a cake, another in an open manhole.
Other than those two scenes, Mr. Deeds doesn't have a lot of laughs.
As far as the acting goes, Sandler has his moments, but this film belongs to John Turturro, who turns in line after line as the goofy butler. Turturro's performance is especially impressive, considering one of his best roles was a more serious one, as a quirky inventor in the film Unstrung Heroes.
As for Sandler, I'm sure we'll see more of him. Mr. Deeds wasn't horrible, but it didn't have the sincerity of The Wedding Singer.
That was his best film.
All the rest hold a tie for his worst.
**** Rated PG-13 for language including sexual references and some rear nudity |
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