MR. DEEDS: Frank Capra Meets Adam Sandler

NOTE: Just in time for Pixels.

RETRO REVIEW

Poor Adam Sandler. (Just hold on, I’m going somewhere with this.) After leaving “Saturday Night Live”, the gates of stardom opened and he began making hit after hit, all comedies of course: Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, The Wedding Singer, The Waterboy and Big Daddy. He threw in the occasional drama; most notably the critically acclaimed Punch-Drunk Love, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. But somewhere along the way, Sandler seemed to settle into making crude, ill-humored cheap fare where he can prance around the screen in goofy voices screaming gibberish. Oh, sure, he did all of that and more from Billy Madison to Big Daddy, but there was a point when it just got increasingly irritating to people. Some might say he’s squandering his talent in filth like Jack and Jill and all the schlocky movies he even parodied in fake trailers made for Judd Apatow’s Funny People. So if he gets why people don’t like him, why does he keep making what they don’t like?

From multiple accounts, Sandler is said to be one of the nicest guys working in movies today. If you’re his friend, you’re more likely to get in one of his movies, or even star in one. Sandler has moved away from movies portraying him as the goofy slacker with a temper towards more of a bewildered father figure in more recent flicks like Blended. He’s found meager success in voicing Count Dracula in Hotel Transylvania and will return in this year’s Hotel Transylvania 2. Many are expressing hope that Pixels will be better than his typical films. But way back when, Sandler was just at the tip of the hate iceberg. He made a film that few talk about today; surprising, considering it crosses both hatred of Sandler and remakes. Especially remaking a Frank Capra movie!

Dead from irrationally climbing Mount Everest, billionaire Preston Blake (Harve Presnell) leaves behind a massive media empire that desperately needs an heir to keep afloat. The company’s two top men Chuck Cedar (Peter Gallagher) and Cecil Anderson (Erick Avari) are sent to Mandrake Falls, New Hampshire after research discovers the closest living relative to Blake: greeting card writer Longfellow Deeds (Adam Sandler). Deeds is a nice enough guy, willing to help anyone with a smile and a cheerful heart. When Cedar and Anderson tell Deeds of his heritage, he agrees to go with them to New York to earn his inheritance but mostly to find a woman to fall in love with. This gets the attention of entertainment reporter Babe Bennett (Winona Ryder) who decides to disguise herself as simple nurse Pam Dawson to accompany Deeds, solely to write stories for her boss, Mac McGrath (Jared Harris). She soon realizes Deeds isn’t the country bumpkin everyone has been led to believe and slowly starts to fall for him.

One might be surprised to find that this film actually does reference to the original Capra film, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. The town of Mandrake Falls and the little poem under its Welcome sign, Deeds and company making echoes in a cavernous room, the names Babe Bennett, Dawson and Cedar, sliding down the stairs, Deeds telling a bunch of high class bullies, “If it wasn’t for Miss Dawson being here, I’d probably knock your heads in,” and Deeds wanting to save a damsel in distress are all nods to the original. Sure, Sandler will never be Gary Cooper, but that’s more reverential than most remakes of this day and age.

Don’t get me wrong, this movie has the same goofy voices and weird gross out humor (Deeds has a black, frost-bitten foot and we’re forced to watch one of McGrath’s henchmen soap his butt). But the heart of Capra still seems to come through, if only through the lens of Sandler. You feel happy for Deeds when he’s happy, sad for Babe when she’s sad, and mad with Deeds when he’s mad. Capra’s film climaxed with Deeds’ sanity being called into question. Sandler’s film wisely skirts this issue (because who wouldn’t believe he’s crazy) in favor of Deeds making a long speech at the end about not giving up on childhood dreams. It’s a nice speech, but a little out of place in this movie.

Capra’s film led to a spiritual sequel, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (more famous than either Deeds film). It’s unlikely anyone – even Adam Sandler – will remake Smith (except Mel Gibson who did it once on “The Simpsons”). But for all its typical Sandler humor, Mr. Deeds has just a little something more that outshines his current work. Maybe it’s because less raunchy than most comedies today that rely on sex and drug jokes; if you took ‘em out, those movies would only be 20 minutes long. One would hope that Capra would have recognized the soul of his film in the depths of this 2002 movie.

What's So Funny About "Hi-Yo Silver"?

NOTE: Brief spoilers.

The Walt Disney Company is probably the largest organization on the planet with the most amount of attention paid to their actions. From canceling TRON 3 after the box office failure of Brad Bird's Tomorrowland to announcing needless remakes of its much beloved animated catalog (Tim Burton doing Dumbo?), it seems no matter where you turn, Disney has made some monumental mishap. Probably none more recent than 2013’s The Lone Ranger, directed by Academy Award-winner Gore Verbinski.

The idea seemed bulletproof. Disney would bring back the creative team behind their famous Pirates of the Caribbean franchise: director Verbinski, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and actor Johnny Depp. At a press event, former head of Studio Production, Dick Cook announced Disney’s intention to produce a new Lone Ranger film to great fanfare with Johnny Depp stepping on stage in full Jack Sparrow attire with a Lone Ranger mask on with a local high school band performing the “William Tell Overture”. 

Unfortunately, the script that was being developed had only the “Overture” to do with what the public knew about the characters of the Lone Ranger and his faithful Native American sidekick, Tonto. Depp reportedly wanted the film to be Hollywood’s apology to Native Americans as he himself is 1/16^th Cherokee Indian. Though heavily denied by the filmmakers, the initial drafts had darker elements to the film including having villain Butch Cavendish shape-shift into the Native American equivalent of a werewolf, which would be the film’s explanation for the silver bullets that the Lone Ranger carries. Disney was quietly worrying that the film was wandering so far away from the radio and television show that people knew well.

"I won an Oscar for turning Johnny Depp into a talking lizard.
Turning him into a Native American oughta get me a Nobel prize!" 

In late summer 2011, the film had the brakes hit violently. After the demise of Jon Favreau’s devastatingly serious genre mash-up, Cowboys & Aliens, Disney CEO Bob Iger and studio head (and replacement of Dick Cook) Rich Ross came to the realization that a Western had not made money in years. Not to mention the budget that Verbinski and Bruckheimer were asking for was well over $250 million (an outrageous sum for any movie not directed by James Cameron). The two men had planned a meeting to try and talk something more reasonable but found themselves the main headline of every trade in town: Disney had killed The Lone Ranger.

Or… at least pulled the plug. For one weekend. Claiming they needed time to strategize going forward with the idea, Disney found themselves at the epicenter of a massive conspiracy theory. The two schools of thought:

1. Verbinski, furious with the treatment Disney was giving him (after giving them a billion-dollar franchise with Pirates and winning an Oscar for Rango), leaked the drama to Deadline Hollywood writer Mike Fleming. 

2. Someone from within Rich Ross’ own office accidentally snitched Disney’s plans to non-reputable sources.

"All I see are dollar signs."

For one weekend, Disney was clamored with phone calls, demanding updates. Unfortunately, this was a holiday weekend and no one was at their offices. In fact, the only person that reporters managed to get on the line was Johnny Depp himself. Calming the waves, Depp assured reporters the film would still get made. When the heads of Disney returned to their desks horrified at the reaction, they immediately set about trying to get the film back up and running. After taking off 20% of their own salaries, Verbinski, Depp and Bruckheimer pleased Disney enough for them to green-light The Lone Ranger.

Despite having their release date changed frequently and a crew member fatally drowning on set, The Lone Ranger came out just as Disney had wanted. And… the public and critics were ready to eviscerate it. The film opened to just below $30 million in its opening weekend and received a 31% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Many were comparing the film to John Carter, in terms of box office shame and studio marketing idiocy. It even won a Razzie for “Worst Prequel, Remake, Ripoff or Sequel”. The filmmakers attempted to decry the critics’ hate-filled opinions as an attack on how large their budget was. Surprisingly, one of the film’s supporters was Quentin Tarantino who remarked, “When I saw it, I kept thinking, ‘What, that’s the film everybody says is crap? Seriously?’”

That is enough from me talking about the behind-the-scenes stuff I enjoy dearly. Everything else but the movie aside, what is wrong with it? First and foremost, the film cannot commit to its lead characters as serious heroes. Oddly enough, this was the same main problem with The Green Hornet, another film from the creators of “The Lone Ranger” (George W. Trendle and Fran Striker) and also starring Tom Wilkinson in an antagonistic role. The question I pose to the filmmakers is this: “If you are embarrassed to make a movie about the Lone Ranger, an American icon who has existed for almost 80 years and is a part of the pop culture lexicon, to the point where you have to make fun of everything the character stands for, why even make the movie?” Yes, branding. I get it. But it doesn’t work if the character you’re branding is almost completely different than what the audience has in their mindset. As created by Trendle and Striker, the Lone Ranger is a kind-hearted, polite, well-meaning action hero who prefers to use his mind to solve problems rather than his fists or his pistols. He will protect the town he resides in while not allowing himself to be captured by the local police believing himself to be working alongside them.

The second biggest problem I have with the film is one scene in particular. While Rebecca (Ruth Wilson) goes to investigate what has happened to John Reid (Armie Hammer) on the train, she leaves her young son holding a gun at a guard. A Disney movie where a kid holds a gun on an adult. This leads to a somewhat unnerving scene where three adults have to talk down an emotionally destroyed kid - who just learned his father was violently murdered - out of killing someone. In a Disney movie. Verbinski is no stranger to making films for families: his first film was the wacky Nathan Lane comedy Mouse Hunt. But there is another film that was clearly not made for families that had the sense to not put a gun in the hands of a kid - Terminator 2: Judgment Day. On the audio commentary, director James Cameron made it clear that John Connor (Edward Furlong) never holds a gun at anyone; however, because of his training to be a military leader, he shows that Sarah has taught him how to reload weapons which helps them in their escape from the T-1000. 

All in all, The Lone Ranger is yet another example of what happens when a studio exec buys a property thinking it'll be perfect for a franchise, gets fired and leaves a studio in disarray trying to figure out how to market said film. It's not an unwatchable film by any means, but it just does not have what the public expects a "Lone Ranger" movie to be. Are these bygone characters that don't work anymore in the 21st century? Maybe. Superheroes that were created around the same time still exist and are box office bonanzas. Disney still managed to use these characters in their popular video game "Disney Infinity" (with Armie Hammer reprising his role). It's all about the respect that a filmmaker/production company/studio gives a property. If they don't care, we don't care. It's just that simple.

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