Big town boy

>> Adam Sandler goes Capra with Mr. Deeds

by MARK SLUTSKY

A measured critique of the work of Adam Sandler is almost impossible, for the real strength of his movies lies in their sheer idiocy. Usually they’ve got a vague plot and supporting characters and emotional arcs and normal movie stuff like that, but they really shine in those moments when all that gets discarded in favour of pure stupid hilarity. Sandler’s latest, Mr. Deeds, while it has its funny moments, spends way too much time on that plot and romance stuff (a common Sandler failing), too often foregoing the stupid for the serious.

The movie’s a remake of Frank Capra’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, with Sandler in the Gary Cooper role. He’s Longfellow Deeds, a small-town nice guy who inherits a business empire when a distant media magnate uncle dies. When the oily city-slicker types looking after the old man’s estate find the guy, they figure him for a chump and fly him to New York so they can scam the corporation out of his hands. Meanwhile, this is all big news, so a plucky reporter (Winona Ryder) goes undercover as small-town gal to get the scoop on our man Deeds.

Naturally, what this is all leading up to is small-town values trumping big-city bogusness; Sandler plays Deeds as just about the nicest guy imaginable, to the point where his favourite hobby is composing rhymes for greeting cards. It’s an old story—country mouse and city mouse—and the filmmakers haven’t brought anything new to it besides a few more obscenities.
So basically what we have with Mr. Deeds is a nice story, not very well told, interspersed with the stuff Sandler fans pay to see: spontaneous violence, snobs being humiliated and unexpected non sequiturs. And this stuff is pretty funny. A good deal of the comic credit for Mr. Deeds ought to go to John Turturro, who plays Sandler’s Spanish valet; it’s a hilarious character and his entrance alone is one of the best jokes in the movie. And tennis loudmouth John McEnroe provides a puzzling cameo that doesn’t really seem funny at first but is redeemed by a quick, inspired sight gag.

But it ain’t all laughs. The romance between Sandler and Ryder (who, incidentally, looks cute as hell) is pretty tedious. And really, while the original source material may be good, director Steven Brill ain’t no Capra. Almost all the non-comic material—and there’s a lot of it—is creakingly dull. More time should’ve been spent on Sandler’s encounters with the upper crust and big-town life, which could have provided the additional yuks this movie needs. Honestly, you don’t go to an Adam Sandler movie for the story. :

Mr. Deeds opens Friday, June 28