Johnny Angel’s Review of Mr. Deeds
Mr. Deeds is the funniest goddamn romantic comedy I ever goddamn saw, and I’ve seen a bunch of them. It would be enough that the movie was offbeat --somehow managing to bring something genuinely new to the genre without violating the formula. In fact, I would have been satisfied if all the film had to recommend it was Winona Ryder’s screen time. But it does more than that. It breaks the preposterousness of the genre apart and replaces it with a new kind of preposterousness, one in which pureheartedness is believable yet sins are redeemable, a person can be bigger than life and yet supporting characters can have room to enchant you.
Plus, Winona Ryder gets a lot of screen time, and she does manage to pull off being a blonde.
No film ever suffered for having John Turturo in the cast, and his performance as Deeds’ butler is hillarious and sometimes moving. Erick Avari is charming as the affable co-conspirator to Peter Gallagher’s evil capitalist.
It is unusually violent for a romantic comedy, and that violence is occasionally cartoony, but it is often unexpected and refreshing to see in the genre. I like the conventional mistaken identities, and humorously switched bags, and wacky misheard conversations and all that of your classic romantic comedy, but what Mr. Deeds offers that few films of its kind do is that people occasionally get their asses kicked for comedic effect. If you want some sort of intellectual justification for laughing at asses getting kicked, call it deconstructionism.
My recommendation: Keep it in mind when you’re renting movies to entertain friends. A lot of people should get a kick out of it.
