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| Mr. Deeds Goes to Town | 
 enlarge | Director: Frank Capra
Actors: Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur, George Bancroft, Lionel Stander, Douglass Dumbrille
Studio: Sony Pictures
Category: DVD
List Price: $19.94
Buy Used: $7.69
You Save: $12.25 (61%)
New (37) Used (24) Collectible (4) from $7.69
Avg. Customer Rating:  39 reviews
Sales Rank: 17210
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Color, Dvd-video, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), Spanish (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), Portuguese (Subtitled), Georgian (Subtitled), Chinese (Subtitled), Thai (Subtitled)
Rating: Unrated
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 115
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
DVD Layers: 1
DVD Sides: 1
Picture Format: Academy Ratio
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.1 x 0.6
MPN: D89439D
ISBN: 0767821564
UPC: 043396894396
EAN: 9780767821568
ASIN: B000031EGT
Theatrical Release Date: April 16, 1936
Release Date: February 1, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Complete with original disc(s), case, and artwork. In stock and ships right now.
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Amazon.com
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: Read 34 more reviews...
 Not nearly as good as I thought it would be... July 30, 2008
It was too long and a little too slow for my liking. He was too brooding, too silent, and was it okay then to punch everyone when you felt like it? I like other Capra films, but this was just okay for me. I like to divide movies into "would I watch it again if someone else wanted me to watch it with them or not?" The answer would be 'no'. I'd find something else better and more interesting to do with my two hours.
 Add Me To The List July 28, 2008
Add me to the list of fawning reviews. If you do not cry at the end of this movie, you are not human. The acting, direction, dialogue, and above all, sheer humanity of this picture make it one of the cinematic greats. Thank you Turner Classic Movies! As a side note, I should disclose that I am a practicing trial attorney. The depiction of my profession is vicious, bordering on hateful. This movie loses a half star for this, but since Amazon only provides full star increments, I'm erring on the side of a one star de-merit. Don't get the wrong idea, I have the ability to laugh at myself and bought into the lawyer bashing as I watched the movie. Only in retrospect do I express this half-star-de-meriting outrage. The lawyers depicted here violated nearly every rule of professional ethics and would be disbarred in any jurisdiction. Shame on you, Frank, for this cheap effort to move the plot! Ironically, it's really at its base a form of stupid intolerance that this very movie seeks to critique.
 High Noon In The Big Apple June 15, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Great title isn't it? I thought so, but then I'm jaded. But then I love Frank and everything he's done.
Don't waste your time (or money) on cheap imitations. You know there is nothing like the original. It is impossible for any remake of any Frank Capra film to be a cinematic improvement over the original, even if the original is in black and white. (Sorry Adam Sandler, it's nothing personal) Capra's character development is genius. The interactions and transformations along with laugh out loud humor make the movie go by way too quickly.
A Most Sublime Piece of "Capra-Corn" with Cooper and Arthur at Their Youthful Zenith February 12, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is "Capra-corn" at its most sublime as this 1936 comedy is still one of the legendary director's best works due primarily to the sterling, career-defining performances of Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur. In the 1930's and 40's, Frank Capra's oeuvre was the humanistic picture, inspirational to the common folk reeling from the Great Depression and later World War II. Written by his frequent (and later quite embittered) collaborator, Robert Riskin, this was his first film fully in this direction after his Oscar-winning success with the quintessential runaway heiress comedy, 1934's It Happened One Night. It's intriguing to know that Capra only made this film because he could not start production on the far more ambitious Lost Horizon as scheduled and fit this in only when Cooper became available for the title role.
Cooper portrays Longfellow Deeds, a young poet and volunteer fireman in a small Vermont town who suddenly inherits $20 million, a huge fortune at the time, from a distant uncle who died in an automobile crash in Italy. Having never been outside of his hometown, Deeds is thrust into the limelight and moves to Manhattan to take care of his uncle's estate and related business interests. The first half has all the trappings of a "fish out of water" situation (which Capra pretty much perfected with this film), but it doesn't take Deeds long to figure out that the people around him are not as sincere as they want him to think. One exception, he believes, is Mary Dawson, a small-town girl looking for a job before she faints from hunger. He falls in love with her not realizing that she is really ace reporter Babe Bennett out to land a juicy newspaper story about Deeds' "Cinderella Man" exploits. Tired of the selfish cynicism surrounding him, Deeds gives away his fortunes to establish a program to help poor farmers. In response, his advisors attempt to have him put away for insanity.
Previously a stoic straight arrow in primarily westerns and female-oriented weepies, Cooper emerges here as a multi-dimensional leading man with a deft comedy touch, while the throaty-voiced Arthur (in a role abandoned by no less than Carole Lombard) shows her natural elan as a tough newspaperwoman who discovers her vulnerability thanks to Deeds' magnanimous gestures. It's no wonder these two returned to Capra's hands in subsequent features - he in Meet John Doe, she in You Can't Take It With You and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. The top-notch supporting cast is headed by Lionel Stander as Deeds' confidante (a role similar to the agent he played in the 1937 A Star Is Born); H.B. Warner as the sympathetic Judge May (who would later return to Capra for Lost Horizon as the wizened Chang and for It's A Wonderful Life as the drunken druggist who slaps George on his deaf ear); and Douglass Dumbrille as the nasty Cedar. The 2006 DVD has a scene-specific commentary track, fairly interesting, from the director's son, Frank Capra, Jr., who is also featured in a ten-minute short about the film. Several vintage trailers of the senior Capra's films are included though surprisingly not one for Deeds.
Definitively he seems to be taken by the delfts February 11, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
"Mr. Deeds" incarnates to a good-natured middle age man, who suddenly is aware he has inherited an immense fortune and decides - for the general surprise - to distribute it among the most needed people.
But beneath the anecdote of this urban fable, there's more; at first place a tongue in the cheek before the hard times of the Great depression of 1929, on the other hand Capra allows himself certain liberties to carve in relief in terms of comedy what years later would come : "The grapes of wrath" ; and finally as you and me might expect he shakes hands with the world, when an inquisitive reporter, trying to understand the motives of his outrageous behaviour, eventually falls in love with him.
We should remark the impressive performance of Gary Cooper, starring this one-of- a-kind personage, his sublime clumsiness, lost glance and childish behaviour around an unique character by then. The sequence in the court room, after he decides to react against the multiple attacks remains as a classic and a formidable magisterial class of realistic acting.
Watch it and then you will make the full round circle with "It's a wonderful life."
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