Home > Comedy >

Mr. Deeds

Watch Now

Mr. Deeds (2002)

June. 28,2002
|
5.8
|
PG-13
| Comedy Romance
Watch Now

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 piece of the pie. Babe, a television tabloid reporter, poses as an innocent small-town girl to do an exposé on Deeds.

...

Watch Trailer

Cast

Similar titles

Reviews

Nonureva
2002/06/28

Really Surprised!

More
Dorathen
2002/06/29

Better Late Then Never

More
StyleSk8r
2002/06/30

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

More
Maleeha Vincent
2002/07/01

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

More
Python Hyena
2002/07/02

Mr. Deeds (2002): Dir: Steven Brill / Cast: Adam Sandler, Winona Ryder, Peter Gallagher, Jon Turturro, Allen Covert: Supposedly based on Mr. Deeds Goes to Town but Adam Sandler hardly fills Gary Cooper's shoes, and director Steven Brill is no Frank Capra either. Sandler plays Longfellow Deeds who inherits forty million dollars. Winona Ryder plays a struggling reporter sent to embarrass him while Peter Gallagher plays a tycoon trying to manipulate him into signing away the company. Lame story with Sandler basically playing the same obnoxious moron he is known to play. He starts out here as a pizza delivery guy before settling in a mansion. Then he is involved in lame subplots, one involving a lady in a burning house who will not leave until Deeds throws all of her cats out the window. Director Brill previously cast Sandler in the equally dreadful Little Nicky. Ryder as the biggest disappointment. It isn't difficult to predict her change of heart and unwillingness to sabotage Deeds. Gallagher is wasted as a rather standard villain. Jon Turturro has the one funny performance as a butler with a foot fetish. He appears periodically but becomes the one good plot turn. Allen Covert also appears as a reporter with more forced humour heaped upon juvenile material. Deeds orders him to beat his frost-bitten foot with a fireplace poker. The same should be done to the film. Score: 3 ½ / 10

More
Dom Nickson
2002/07/03

After I saw this film like 20 to 30 times. I realized that the only truly funny scene that got to me was when the guy gets whipped by his father after saying, "NO DADDY, NO!" I never laughed at the scene when the cats were in the burning building, I never laughed when Adam fell through the table, and I never laughed during the epic fight scene in the restaurant. I just don't care for this film at all. It's all about the stock market and honestly I have more fun in my own accounting class then I do watching this movie. Oddly, I thought Winona Ryder did OK with what she had to work with and she really captures the audience's attention. Adam Sandler did play a good role too but this film wasn't as funny as it was anticipated to be. I give it a 4 out of 10 because it was alright the way it was written, it's just there wasn't enough jokes, I thought. It was more serious in tone and I think that took away from having Adam Sandler in the film. Adam Sandler is usually pretty funny, but here he plays a character that seems like kind of a bore and it really is hard to make a character comedic.

More
Steve Pulaski
2002/07/04

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.

More
jhs4
2002/07/05

When this movie first came out, I was about 13 or 14 years old. I remember I couldn't stop laughing every time I watched it. I was literally obsessed with the movie. I would watch it through, then rewind the tape, and watch it again. I spent most of my winter vacation from school watching Mr. Deeds. I begged for the DVD for my birthday, and by the time I got the DVD, I was so sick of the movie that I never wanted to watch it again. I was just flipping through channels today and it was on Comedy Central, and I was trying to figure out what amazed me so much about this movie. It is corny, dull, and predictable. The whole love story that develops throughout the movie has no chemistry, and the actors cannot convince the audience that they really belong together.Despite all of the pitfalls of this film, I will admit that there are a few points that do always make me giggle a little (i.e. "This was my brother's room...my parents hated my brother."), so I guess that's a credit to the quality of some of the jokes.All in all, I would say this is a film worth watching at least once in your life, but I wouldn't recommend buying the DVD or paying for it in a theater.

More