Fantastic!

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Sandler's attempts to be less goofy meant a remake of the Frank Capra classic.When multi millionaire media mogul Preston Blake dies, his unknown nephew Longfellow Deeds (Adam Sandler), who runs a pizza shop and writes greeting cards is contacted Chuck Cedar (Peter Gallagher), who is temporarily in control of the media empire. He wants Deeds to sell his shares in the company to Cedar and return home $40 billion richer. However he gets involved with an undercover reporter (Winona Ryder) and Cedar plans to get the company by all possible means.Sandler very much is the nice guy here, not goofy, not bad tempered and hopes to stretch his acting muscles but is still a bit too much of a lovable dork. There are still some gross jokes, some songs and his regular acting friends drop by such as Steve Buscemi and Rob Schneider. John Turtturo stands out as the faithful butler who suddenly sneaks up on you. There are even a few cameos like John McEnroe.The plot is rather flimsy and predictable. The romantic angle does not really work. Sandler is nice but not too funny and as a remake it adds nothing to an original that has been rated very highly for years. This is not one of the better Sandler films.

It is bizarre for me to fathom the idea that Adam Sandler chose the leading role in a remake of a Frank Capra film from 1936 with Gary Cooper as the leading man. As expected, Mr. Deeds isn't a tiresome retread of old material but a tiresome retread through the odds and ends of Sandler's buffoonish schtick, further cementing that despite tackling a wide range of roles, he has yet to adopt a screen presence that he will choose to make tolerable on his audiences.This sits comfortably aside Happy Gilmore, a film I found funny at first, but ultimately, mean-spirited, obnoxious, and overall incredibly unrewarding. But if we're looking at this film as a character study, then this is probably one of the better Sandler characters. Throughout the first few scenes I thought he'd be one of the best, but as soon as Sandler threw punches occupied by horribly unrealistic sound effects that seemed to interrupt the flow of wind and air my optimism deteriorated.At first glance, the premise mildly passable; Preston Blake (Harve Presnell) is a great American businessman running dozens of television and radio stations across the county and has accumulated an inane amount of money throughout his lifetime. After an attempt to climb a mountain results in him freezing to death, those who run portions of Blake's company find that he left all his savings to his nephew, Longfellow Deeds (Sandler). Just call him "Deeds." Deeds comes from a humble town there everyone is polite, understanding, naive, and welcoming to all walks of life. In other words, the world we should live in but do not. When two representatives of Blake's company come to visit Deeds to inform him that his uncle left him $40 billion, they find he is employed at a busy pizzeria and that his biggest ambition is to write greeting cards for Hallmark. Upon informing him of his earnings, Deeds seems shockingly lax and uninterested and when he is taken to his uncle's luxurious apartment it would seem that he has seen hundreds of the same.Overtime, as Deeds begins to somewhat enjoy his fortune, helping others, and making new friends, he becomes acquainted with Winona Ryder's character after she is "mugged" out in the cold streets. She tells Deeds she is "Pam Dawson," a school nurse from "Winchestertonfieldville, Iowa," and the two begin to go out. The one thing she neglects to tell him is that her name is actually Babe Bennett, and she works for a TMZ-like station and tries to dig up dirt on Deeds by carrying around a hidden camera and microphone so that she can return the footage to her boss to rework it into something slanderous. Until she realizes what she is doing "is wrong" and begins to have feelings for the man.Thankfully, the film spares us the ridiculous "man's money goes to his head" cliché but instead, gives us enough unnecessary sight gags to fill two films. Consider a scene where Deeds reveals to his butler that when he was younger his right foot became so frostbitten that it lost all remote feeling and turned charcoal-black. We then get an outrageous sequence of the man jumping on, stepping on, and stabbing Deeds' foot in hopes to strike some form of clear emotion.And consider another sequence where Deeds is in the right place at the right time and attempts to save a woman from her burning apartment building, but first must rescue her seven cats. He proceeds to throw them outside of the window so they can land on what appears to be a trampoline held by firefighters and proceed to bounce into the next comedic setup. The whole scene is witless and provided me with some of the most wincing and cringing I've done this year to a film that was a comedy. Consistent readers know I do not tolerate animal abuse in films, especially, when it is done for no good reason. To try and get laughs out of it is sickening.Mr. Deeds could've been a fun, lightweight comedy if it weren't for its tonal inconsistency, its barrage of unnecessary sequences, shallow characters, and cheap plot pitfalls.Starring: Adam Sandler, Winona Ryder, Kathy Bates, Peter Dante, Allen Covert, Rob Schneider, J.B. Smoove, and Harve Presnell. Directed by: Steven Brill.

When Longfellow Deeds, a small-town pizzeria owner and poet, inherits $40 billion from his deceased uncle, he quickly begins rolling in a different kind of dough.Moving to the big city, Deeds finds himself besieged by opportunists all gunning for their pie.Babe, a television tabloid reporter, poses as an innocent small-town girl to do an exposé on Deeds. Of course, Deeds' sincere naiveté has Babe falling in love with him instead.Ultimately, Deeds comes to find that money truly has the power to change things, but it doesn't necessarily need to change him....So the thing is about this film, is that it's been done time and time again by Sandler. He plays the nice guy against the odds, who meets a nice girl, but has a lot of obstacles to overcome, usually in the shape of very rich people.But these films work on so many levels. Not because of the story or the flow of the narrative, it's the random characters and their traits, that distract the viewer from the story, and just deliver the big laughs.There is nothing original in the story, but the fact that a tennis player can jump 15 or so feet in the air, an opera singer sings as he is being beaten up, John Tuturro being sneaky, just makes for the film to so silly, you cannot help but laugh.And laugh I did. It's one of Sandlers best films, and despite the fact his movies are gradually diminishing in quality, you cannot help but smile.It's a big fat sunshine movie, full of joy, and guaranteed to make you laugh.Don't be a snob, let yourself go....

A misfire, but not without its moments. This absolutely unnecessary remake of the Frank Capra classic has a small town everyman (Sandler) inheriting a fortune and moving to the big city where he is almost always one step ahead of the con men and crooks who would love to hang him out to dry. His one weakness is Winona Ryder as plucky Lois Lane-type reporter who worms her way into his life in order to get a story. The film is utterly devoid of charm, but it has some physical comedy (Sandler beating up on various people) that should make most of you laugh out loud. Sandler is his usual watchable self, and this may explain why such an unnecessary movie raked in almost four times what it cost to make.