Mr. Deeds

Star Adam Sandler, director Steven Brill and writer Tim Herlihy (who, understandably, can’t seem to get work except from his pal Adam) do a Beavis and Butthead remake of 1936’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, with Sandler hijacking Gary Cooper’s role of a small-town rube who inherits a vast fortune and becomes the target of city-slicker jokes. There are two levels on which to despise this foul, putrid cesspool of a movie: for the vulgar, ugly looking monstrosity it is (Sandler does his usual shtick of mixing slobbering coarseness with puerile bathos), and for its barbaric desecration of one of the great movies of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Someday, Sandler, Brill and Herlihy may all have to answer to the shades of Gary Cooper, director Frank Capra and writer Robert Riskin—and it won’t be pretty.