Mr. Deeds Review
by Susan Granger (ssg722 AT aol DOT com)June 28th, 2002
Susan Granger's review of "Mr. Deeds" (Columbia Pictures and New Line Cinema) 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."
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