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Mr. Deeds
Columbia Pictures / Sony Pictures Entertainment
FILM:
MPAA RATING: PG-13 for language including sexual references, and some rear nudity
Starring
Adam Sandler,
Winona Ryder,
John Turturro,
Steve Buscemi,
Jared Harris,
Peter Gallagher,
Allen Covert,
and
Conchata Ferrell
In this homage to the 1936 Frank Capra classic "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town," Adam Sandler plays Mr. Deeds, a young man from the small town of Mandrake Falls, NH who inherits controlling interest in a massive media corporation from his deceased uncle.
| GENRE(S): |
Romance
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Tim Herlihy
Clarence Budington Kelland (short story Opera Hat)
Robert Riskin (film Mr. Deeds Goes to Town)
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Steven Brill
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: October 22, 2002
Video: October 22, 2002
Theatrical: June 28, 2002
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
91 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
75
Boston Globe
Wesley Morris
Armed with a dinner theater accent and hair that looks like an LP melted on his head, Turturro pockets the picture. As a demonstration of his newly accessed maturity and benevolence, Sandler helps him do it.
75
Miami Herald
Connie Ogle
Surprisingly sweet and, dare we say it, old-fashioned, with an engaging sense of humor that's a definite improvement on lame, lowbrow efforts such as "Little Nicky."
63
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
The supporting cast is almost uniformly good, from Conchata Ferrell as a sympathetic waitress to Erick Avari as a corporate type with a surprisingly big heart and a hidden silly streak. Turturro relishes his quiet overplaying and steals the bulk of his scenes.
63
USA Today
Mike Clark
If Sandler felt compelled to take on a role immortalized by Gary Cooper, at least it wasn't as "Sergeant York," "Lou Gehrig" or the sheriff in "High Noon."
63
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
Sandler nimbly steps into the role created by Cooper and makes it his nebbishy own, something that cannot be said for Ryder's attempt to rethink the Arthur part. Ryder is lovely, but perhaps too sincere an actress to play a wiseacre.
58
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
Mr. Deeds, is -- perhaps predictably -- pretty much of a disaster. It's a bit like someone scrawling a mustache on the Mona Lisa.
50
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
Sporadically funny, dumbed-down version.
50
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
Mr. Deeds is flat, except on those rare occasions when Sandler reverts to form or when John Turturro steals one of many scenes.
50
Portland Oregonian
Kim Morgan
Though it's enjoyable, you can't help but feel the squandered situations and talent, flattened by mediocre writing and direction. Scoff if you will, but the gifted Sandler and his audience deserve better.
50
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Keith Phipps
The film owes as much to Caddyshack as to Capra.
50
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
An idiot variation on Frank Capra's ''Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,'' might have been thrown together in even less time than it takes Sandler to get dressed in the morning; it feels sort of like the dumbest corporate comedy of 1987.
50
Chicago Reader
Joshua Rothkopf
Sandler adapts his sweet-natured doofus shtick to this remarkably faithful remake of Frank Capra's 1936 rube-in-the-big-city comedy Mr. Deeds Goes to Town--which suggests that Capra may have invented dumb movies before their time.
50
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
A stink bomb of a movie.
40
Film Threat
Michael Dequina
Not that the lackluster love story will matter any to the Sandler faithful, who are there to see the star beat people up and work his regular joe mojo on snooty types; those viewers will certainly get their fill and then some.
40
Salon.com
Andrew O'Hehir
Utterly predictable, thoroughly sentimental and -- worse -- not all that funny. It makes your average episode of "Third Rock From the Sun" look like the edgy mutant offspring of John Waters and Ingmar Bergman.
38
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
Turturro is the one thing that's right with the movie. Perhaps the weakest thing about the new "Deeds" is its utter lack of a strong viewpoint and real emotion.
38
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
There's no chemistry between Deeds and Babe, but then how could there be, considering that their characters have no existence, except as the puppets in scenes of plot manipulation.
38
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
Something's wrong with the math here -- the inheritance of the story's small-town hero is enlarged from $20 million to $40 billion, yet the new movie isn't worth the price of a Depression-era ticket.
30
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
This is a terrible movie in its own right, tasteless and condescending -- if Sandler's character is an Everyman, than the Everyman of today is a boorish jackass
25
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
Adam Sandler does Frank Capra wrong. His unfunny remake stomps all over the honest values and endearing qualities of the original.
20
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
The remake stumbles from a ragged start into a child's garden of worses -- worse than the original in more ways than you could imagine.
20
LA Weekly
Hazel-Dawn Dumpert
Sandler is -- à la "The Wedding Singer" -- in his washout romantic mode here, and no amount of spastic-colon jokes, cartoon violence or good-buddy cameos (Al Sharpton, John McEnroe) can distract from the fact that Gary Cooper he ain't.
20
The New York Times
A.O. Scott
Mr. Deeds is mostly terrible, a shambles of a comedy that looks as if it was shot by a tabloid news crew.
20
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
Crazy, ugly and scary. In fact, a sense of the grotesque runs thought the film; an extended joke about Sandler's black, dead foot (from frostbite as a kid) borders on something you find in John Waters.
20
New York Magazine
Peter Rainer
Hollywood movies are once again taking on the job that Andy Griffith–era TV sitcoms used to fill, touting homespun values in Never Land.
20
Variety
Todd McCarthy
A perfectly dreadful film.
10
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
It's not just that the movie itself is wicked awful, it's that Mr. Deeds brings out the worst in Adam Sandler.
10
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
The projectors in the theater practically shut down with boredom.
10
Slate
David Edelstein
This is another of those post-Saturday Night Live vehicles in which ineptitude and laziness are supposed to be taken as irony: It's not bad, it's "bad." Actually, it's "terrible":
10
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
What's most interesting about this new film is how lacking it is in any of the things, from humor to emotion to halfway decent acting, we might go to a movie for. There's not even enough here to get mad at.
0
Austin Chronicle
Marjorie Baumgarten
Nothing about this movie works.
0
New Times (L.A.)
Robert Wilonsky
A torturous, mawkish, ill-conceived remake.
0
Village Voice
Michael Atkinson
Stay home. Your entertainment-seeking efforts would be better expended perusing old phone books. The white pages.
 The average user rating for this movie is 6.2 (out of 10) based on 54 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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