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Also this issue: Long, Long, Long |
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June 27-July 3, 2002
movies
 DO YOU SMELL SOMETHING?: Adam Sandler extends a foot to John Turturro. |
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Mr. DeedsDirected by Steven Brill A Sony Pictures release Opens Friday at area theaters
Poor Noni. As if the shoplifting trial weren’t bad enough, now she’s had to do publicity for the latest Adam Sandler flick. In interview after interview, on Saturday Night Live, and during an MTV Movie Awards presentation gig with Sandler, Winona Ryder has had to act as if playing opposite this guy -- who makes sophomoric comedies by design -- is something she wanted to do. On purpose.
Even on paper, Mr. Deeds must have looked like a bad idea. Though its makers have said it's an updating of Frank Capra's classic Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, it is, at base, an Adam Sandler vehicle. It follows exactly the formula laid down by its way-too-many predecessors: That is, Sandler plays a small-town, backwoods, illegitimate dimwit (or maybe just a profoundly unambitious law-school graduate) whose purity of heart triumphs over the smart-alecky hijinks of various antagonists, ranging from golf pros to football players to Satan.
In this version, Sandler plays a little-ville New Hampshire pizza-parlor owner named Longfellow Deeds, also the unlikely and unknowing heir to a $40 billion fortune. When his will-less uncle dies suddenly, conniving exec Chuck Cedar (Peter Gallagher) hauls Deeds down to NYC to sign over his shares in his dead uncle's humongous corporation.
As if this weren't enough fun, Deeds also faces a secondary antagonist, a tabloid TV news host (Jared Harris), apparently desperate to exploit Deeds nightly. He puts his most vivacious reporter on the story, Babe Bennett (Jean Arthur's role in the Capra, here filled by the lovely one-time Oscar nominee Winona). She tapes a camera between her breasts and pretends to be a damsel in distress: Deeds saves her by beating the bejeezus out of her pretend-mugger (actually Babe's co-worker, played by Sandler movie regular Allen Covert, who spends the rest of the movie in a neck brace. How hilarious is that?).
Deeds falls hard for the pretend-virginal Babe, romancing her on a series of "dates" (riding bikes, saving a woman and her seven cats from a burning building) designed to demonstrate just how unbelievably nice he is. These dates are terminally dull, and occasional dollops of stupidly violent slapstick don't help, though it's apparent that someone on the set thought Deeds' repeated recourse to pummeling and body slamming was a terrific idea.
The single sliver of speed and sly humor comes in the form of John Turturro, who might as well be in another movie, he's so divorced from this one's tempo and sensibility. As the dead uncle's loyal valet Emilio, Turturro gets to play a foot fetishist who prides himself on being "sneaky, sneaky." When he espies Deeds' black foot (supposedly deadened by frostbite when he was a child, but really just a cumbersome key "plot" point later on), Emilio's eyes roll back: "De hideousness of dat foot will haunt my dreams!" he shudders. Much like dis movie.
