Mr. Deeds Goes to Town: Amazon.ca: George Bancroft, Gary Cooper, H.B. Warner, Jean Arthur, Lionel Stander, Douglass Dumbrille, Raymond Walburn, Frank Capra, Columbia Pictures Corporation: DVD

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Mr. Deeds Goes to Town is Frank Capra's classic screwball comedy about a village innocent who inherits $20 million, only to discover it's more trouble than it's worth. The screwball in question is Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper), a small-town greeting-card poet and tuba player transplanted to the big city to administer his newly inherited wealth, where fast-pattering, wised-up cynics, sneering society denizens, and corrupt lawyers lord it over the ingenuous and straightforward. Deeds's idiosyncrasies are amply magnified in the tabloids by journalist "Babe" Bennett (Jean Arthur), dating Deeds as a cover, only to discover she's the sap when she falls irresistibly for him. But the damage has been done, when Babe's column is used by a pack of corrupt lawyers, Cedar, Cedar, Cedar & Budington, to prove Deeds mentally unfit. The miracle of this unforgettable comedy is how it embraces dark material, calling into question some common assumptions about capitalism while maintaining an approachable atmosphere of light comedy, and deceptively so. You'll be so pixilated by its charm, you won't rest until you've doodled your way to a rhyme for "Budington." --Jim Gay

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Customer Reviews

27 Reviews

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

Average Customer Review

4.5 out of 5 stars (27 customer reviews)

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3.0 out of 5 stars Mr. Capra Goes Overboard, July 11 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Full Screen) (DVD)

Director Frank Capra's work doesn't hold up as well today as some of his contemporaries' because of his habit of over-inflating his scripts. "Deeds" starts out wonderfully well when the tuba-playing small-town yeoman Gary Cooper inherits a fortune and heads for the big city to look into it. But Capra can't leave well enough alone and transforms the funny contrasts into a ridiculously overblown sanity hearing. Capra repeated the same missteps in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and "Meet John Doe", straining for social commentary and ending up with pomposity. Still, I would recommend Deeds and those other two pictures for all the scenes Capra got right. Cooper serenading the townspeople by playing "Auld Lang Syne" on his tuba from the back of a departing train is a real classic.

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5.0 out of 5 stars better than the sandler version, Mar 28 2004

By

James Roberts (Greenville, SC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Full Screen) (DVD)

This is a great movie. The Adam Sandler version might be funnier in a silly, mindless way, but this movie makes a point that too many people forget. People who criticize this movie as naive or propaganda have bought into too much capitalist propaganda. The only people who wouldn't like the message this movie makes are slaveholders and feudal barons. Beautiful movie making a point that we should all remember in our daily life. When Deeds' assistant comments on the difficulty of feeding all of the farmers ("there's 2000 of them"), Deeds replies "that doesn't make them any less hungry." This movie isn't naive. It should simply remind us of how to be human. Its a shame that the message even needs to be said or that the Sandler version would suck the beauty out of it for a cheap lines from a hispanic butler.

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2.0 out of 5 stars I'm sure this was GREAT sixty some-odd years ago., Aug 12 2003

By

fleshybanana "Nairb" (unknown) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Full Screen) (DVD)

...But today I found it as bland as a glass of water, however not pure or refreshing. In fact reading a dull, damp B&W newspaper is just as entertaining and very similar. Classic or not I just found the remake with Adam Sandler & Winona Ryder very funny and fresh. So I wanted to see where it came from. My great grandma loved the original when she was my age.. I'm guessing. But being that the only B&W film I liked was "Psycho", I'm glad that they remade this film just for me.

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Most recent customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Moving Capresque flick
MY RATING- 7.8

This is quite a moving tale a la american by the master of socio drama, Frank Capra in which he uses one of his fave actors Gary Cooper as the country man who... Read more

Published on Dec 1 2002 by scottie

2.0 out of 5 stars just to naive to be true
This kind of social comedy, with its naive eulogy of the simple man, the inocent farmers and the small american town, just gives me the creeps. Read more

Published on Sep 16 2002

5.0 out of 5 stars "A thing of beauty"
This is a terrific movie about a man who is literally plucked from his quiet small town life and brought to New York to deal with newly inherited millions. Read more

Published on Sep 7 2002 by R. Plemmons

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Movie but He'dd be jailed or medicated today.
This movie is the story of a simple small town man who suddenly ends up with $20 mil from a dead uncle. Read more

Published on Aug 9 2002 by Peter Ingemi

4.0 out of 5 stars Life in the Big City.
This original film opened in 1936, starring Gary Cooper a country bumpkin from an obscure new England town, who has just found out he is the beneficiary of a fortune, left to him... Read more

Published on July 31 2002 by Denise Bentley

5.0 out of 5 stars A funny and sweet movie...
When I heard that a remake was being made of this movie, I was totally outraged. Remakes are made for three reasons, in my opinion: a director sees a good concept that is carried... Read more

Published on July 13 2002 by ehakus

5.0 out of 5 stars Why don't they make them like this anymore?
Even after retiring from showbiz, Frank Capra remained a very popular director until his death in 1991. Read more