Mr. Deeds (2002, DVD)

If there is one thing that Mr. Deeds is trying to tell us (and it says it several times), it s that simple doesn t necessarily mean stupid. I think it s speaking as much about itself as it is about its main character. The movie is simple, but that doesn t mean it s stupid.


In the movie, Deeds (Adam Sandler) gives a speech at one point to a bunch of sickeningly rich muckety-mucks, and asks them if, when they were children, what they wanted when they grew up was to make a lot of money. Of course not. They wanted to be firemen, and magicians, and veterinarians. They wanted to be things that meant something, not just whatever made the most money.

An appeal, we might call this, to the more simple, perhaps the more real .


Well, I m willing to play the movie s game. An appreciation for the finer works of classical literature doesn t mean one cannot possibly appreciate Mad magazine. An appreciation for some of the more genius works of comedy (the high brow comedy, as it were) like Wodehouse, Wilde, etc., etc., doesn t mean that one cannot enjoy Saturday Night Live (umm..., some of it anyway).


So, I try to play along and see where I get.


Mr. Deeds is nothing if not simple. It is a simple story made even more simple. It has simple characters which are made even more simple. It is simple humor, that is frankly only funny occasionally, and not very funny even then. That is not to say that the movie isn t funny though. It is. It s just that it isn t very funny. It isn t fall over laughing funny. It s just sort of smirk funny. It is, however, despite the contradiction many think this implies, fun.


It s an old story. A story that was old when the first movie was made, and really, one that was old when the short story was written by Clarence Kelland. Deeds has an uncle that is disgustingly rich. Said uncle dies, and small-town boy Deeds inherits all the money. In this case, 40 billion dollars. Small-town morality and simple lifestyle meets big city. Small-townness wins. It s the basic theory of everything Frank Capra, including the original movie.

Our plot moves along with Chuck Cedar (Peter Gallagher), a bigshot in the company now mostly owned by Deeds, trying to get control of everything by way of having Deeds sell his shares in the company. Also, reporter Babe Bennett (Winona Ryder) is trying to get the story on Deeds. She winds up falling in love with him.

It s not difficult to see where things go. Deeds is out of his element and over his head, and things move along in a progression of gags that let us into the Deeds mentality and how it conflicts with the big city ideas of human interaction. Babe, jaded by that same big city mentality as well as her experiences working in tabloid journalism, sees Deeds as the goof everyone else assumes him to be, but soon begins to fall in love with him. Chuck spends the movie trying to make sure Deeds wants nothing to do with city life or business ownership, and generally making us dislike him.



Adam Sandler is really pretty good here. Trying to move a bit more (but not very far) towards something serious, or at least seriousish. He is here an everyman style character similar to his Big Daddy average joe .

Winona Ryder, as usual, is a bit flat at times, but passable if not wholly believable.

It s nice to see Peter Gallagher working, and he s about at his best really. He develops a character we can dislike, but still laugh at.

John Turturro is brilliant as Deeds Spanish, sneaky butler. The movie is worth watching for Turturro alone, and almost worth watching just for the single line, I think you are underestimating the sneakiness.


So it is simple. It knows it s simple. It plays with a feel similar to Big Daddy , and maybe even Reality Bites . But, is it stupid? I don t think so. Silly, surely, at times quite goofy even, but not stupid. I suppose the problem comes from exactly the sort of thing that the movie is trying to discredit, which is the idea that anything that is not smart is stupid.


When I was a little kid, I didn t want to be a movie critic, I just wanted to be entertained. Somewhere along the line, Scooby Doo might have appealed to me. I outgrew that possibility, because the movie is just plain stupid. I didn t outgrow the ability to be entertained by Mr. Deeds though, even if I can only give it three stars. I would have to say that the movie only aspires to four stars at best, and it doesn t quite get there. It s a little too silly and it breaks through the screen a few times too many.

Yes, it has a lot of problems. There is more of caricature than character to anyone we see in it, and you have to sort of give it the benefit of the doubt as far as whether or not it even understands its own story. Even so, it s a bit of a laugh, and it s really just trying to be a simple piece of entertainment.

Unfortunately, this is a world where the majority of simple things are stupid, and we jump to conclusions. A world where the movies that try to defend themselves as being just entertainment , and not to be taking too seriously will invariably contain a great deal of bodily function humor, or will otherwise leave little boys on playgrounds rolling with laughter. It s no great surprise then that any movie that is aiming at being just a bit of a laugh will be seen as stupid.


Someone once said, (and you may call this paraphrasing, but I simply call it misquoting) that there is everything in everyman. There is a King and a beggar. A hero and a coward. But the most important thing inside a man is a little boy. Some people have taken this to mean that inside any man is a drunk, fraternity idiot. Mr. Deeds just thinks that it means you can read Voltaire and also enjoy a good comic book. As someone else once said, it is no wise man who doesn t know that is good to act a fool at the proper time.