Adam Sandler delivers bland performance in 'Mr. Deeds'
By Jack Garner
Gannett News Service
 |
| MR. DEEDS (Rated PG-13 with moderate profanity and innuendo) Two Stars (Fair)
An uneven, dumbed-down adaptation of Frank Capra's sentimental 1936 comedy about a good-hearted country boy who inherits a ton of money and goes to the big city to run a corporation. Adam Sandler and Winona Ryder co-star, though supporting player John Turturro gets the most laughs. Steven Brill directs. Columbia Pictures, 91 mins. |
Perhaps since Adam Sandler is playing Cooper's old role in his uneven remake of "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town," the comic decided to try the less-is-more approach. But unfortunately, Sandler has none of Coop's magic.
Even when Sandler is on the big screen in "Mr. Deeds," he still looks like he's doing nothing. I can't recall a less inspired, blander performance.
As remakes go, "Mr. Deeds" also lacks passion and inspiration — but at least it's not an attempt to literally remake the 1936 Frank Capra film.
Instead, regular Sandler writer Tim Herlihy has taken the basic premise of the original "Deeds," but updated it and dumbed it down for Sandler's peculiar brand of silliness.
Sandler is Longfellow Deeds, the operator of a pizza parlor in the idealized small town of Mandrake Falls in New Hampshire. As a hobby, he writes sentimental greeting card poems that he tries unsuccessfully to sell to Hallmark.
As the film opens, corporate baron Preston Blake dies while trying to climb Mount Everest. His will leaves his entire $40 billion fortune (including media outlets, the New York Jets, various factories and much more) to Deeds, his never-seen nephew.
A corporate helicopter comes to Mandrake Falls to whisk our befuddled hero to Manhattan, where a whole new lifestyle is spread out before him. But he also encounters a slimeball of a corporation board chairman (Peter Gallagher) who tries to hoodwink Deeds into selling away control of the Blake empire.
Typical of country-boy-big-city stories, Deeds is much smarter than the city slickers imagine. They're eventually undone by his smart but good-hearted intentions.
Along the way, Deeds also falls in love, although he has no idea his new girlfriend (Winona Ryder) is actually a tabloid journalist in disguise.
"Mr. Deeds" falls into the silly-sweet side of the Sandler spectrum, along with "Big Daddy" and the superior "The Wedding Singer." And it lacks any of the edgier anarchy of the other sort of Sandler product, such films as "Billy Madison" and "Happy Gilmore."
But it seems for the first time in his dopey comedy career, Sandler can't find the inane center of his character. Instead, he goofs around with a stupid running gag about Deed's ugly foot, blackened years earlier by frostbite.
Ryder makes a valiant effort as Deeds' love interest, but since she's playing opposite a performer with the effervescence of a deflated blow-up doll, it's all for naught.
Fortunately, a few supporting actors generate some scene-stealing laughs. They include Erick Avari as Anderson, a white-bearded, pipe-smoking corporate executive who seems to have the only streak of decency among the uppity-ups at Blake Enterprises; and especially John Turturro, who is hilarious as Emilio, the Spanish butler inherited by Deeds.
The film's best ongoing joke has Emilio making instantaneous appearances and disappearances.
"Mr. Deeds" has been directed, without much imagination, by Steven Brill, who also directed Sandler's disastrous "Little Nicky." At the risk of conveying faint praise, I can say "Mr. Deeds" is an improvement.
Rated PG-13, with moderate profanity and innuendo.
