Adam Sandler has often been targeted by the Golden Raspberry Awards. In 2012, he swept all categories for Jack and Jill, where he plays both main characters. Earlier, Mr Deeds was nominated for worst remake or sequel, losing to Swept Away, but the nomination reflected skepticism about updating the 1936 Mr Deeds Goes to Town and about Sandler’s performance. Mr Deeds is not Sandler’s most popular or acclaimed film, yet it remains watchable and closer in spirit to Capra’s original than expected. Capra’s films center naive idealists facing powerful systems, and Sandler’s Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, and Big Daddy similarly examine class and wealth through developmentally arrested man-children. Mr Deeds follows its source’s basic structure: Deeds inherits a fortune and media control, is moved to New York, faces corporate pressure and tabloid harassment, and retains archaic character names like Longfellow and Babe Bennett.
"In 2012 he famously swept every category at the 32nd Golden Raspberry awards for Jack and Jill, in which Sandler plays both eponymous characters. Almost a decade earlier, at the 2003 ceremony, director Steven Brill's Mr Deeds starring Sandler was nominated for worst remake or sequel. Though it ultimately lost to Guy Ritchie's Swept Away, the nomination suggested a dim view on the film's attempts to renovate the original the 1936 Mr Deeds Goes to Town, directed by the indomitable, six-time Oscar-winning Frank Capra as well as Sandler's performance in it."
"Though Mr Deeds isn't Sandler's most popular or critically acclaimed film, it is an endearing watch, and not so far removed from the hallowed image of Capra's original. Like many of Capra's films, which are about a naive and idealistic everyman propped up against the machine, Sandler's Billy Maddison, Happy Gilmore and Big Daddy are just as interested in divisions of class and wealth; their studies of the human condition are etched by Sandler's developmentally arrested man-children."
"After all, what is Click if not a dirtbag gen X remake of It's a Wonderful Life? The 2002 Mr Deeds follows the general schematic of its source material. Deeds (Sandler) inherits a $40b fortune and control of a global media empire from a distant relative. He's whisked from his simple small town life, slinging pizzas and writing sappy greeting cards, and brought to New York City to sort out his affairs, where he's beseeched by money hungry conglomerate CEO Chuck Cedar (Peter Gallagher) and hounded by the tabloid press."
"Charmingly, this version retains the archaic names of its characters. Deeds' first name is Longfellow — an anachronism Sandler's character is cheekily hush hush about (easy with that Longfellow stuff! he says). The scheming journo (Winona Ryder), desperate to get the scoop on the beneficiary's identity by assuming another persona, is named Babe Bennett. She fictionalise"
Read at www.theguardian.com
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