“The hideousness of that foot will haunt my dreams forever.”

Justin’s rating: A foot fetish movie that not even Quentin will find sexy

Justin’s review: I don’t have any major direct proof or anything, but I can’t help but think that 2002’s Punch-Drunk Love and Mr. Deeds were deliberate attempts to course-correct Adam Sandler’s film career after the critical disaster that was Little Nicky. A serious drama and a crowd-pleasing romcom were a good start on apologizing for the Satanic panic that he caused.

But can you tame Adam Sandler in the span of a single year? The attempt to do just that resulted in a strange clash between a very safe and predictable plot and the bizarre tropes that Sandler was towing around since 1995. It’s trying so hard to have the best of both worlds that this movie strains under the tension of it.

First, the predictable: Mr. Deeds the tale of a New Hampshire pizza parlor owner named Deeds (Sandler) who learns that he’s inherited $40 billion in shares of his late great uncle’s media empire. Deeds is a super-genial everyman who hugs everyone nice and punches everyone mean. He heads to NYC to slip into his new rich lifestyle, romance a secret tabloid reporter named Babe (Winona Ryder), and eventually undo a plot to lose the company to the evil COO (Peter Gallagher).

But second, the tropes, because Mr. Deeds also works in all of the extras that Sandler fans came to suspect. All of his supporting comedic friends (Allen Covert, Peter Dante, Steve Buscemi, Blake Clark, Rob Schneider) show up, Deeds has an explosive temper, and there’s a lot of the out-of-nowhere eccentric moments that garner the most laughs here.

Do these go together? Not really, because the predictable movie is extremely bland* and the romance angle has no real chemistry or interesting developments. What audiences probably wanted was a whole lot of “weirdo becomes a rich weirdo and acts obnoxiously for 90 minutes” without any restraints. Instead, we get a taste of that but not the full course.

A shout-out is needed for two characters who steal every scene when they appear. The excellent Erick Avari (The Mummy) appears with his amazing beard and pompous pipe, and I absolutely loved his snickering and childlike delight at Deeds’ behavior. But even better is John Turturro (Rounders) as Emilio, Deeds’ sneaky and snarky Spanish butler. Turturro is so dang good that I actually wished the whole movie was about him.

It’s not a bad movie — in fact, it goes down pretty easy — but Mr. Deeds does lack the edginess that Sandler championed in his ’90s run. This marks the end of an era, I guess, but it was probably time to move on, lest we got Little Nicky 2. Then again, we eventually ended up with Grown Ups 2, so it’s not like civilization improved overall.

*Deeds being an aspiring Hallmark card writer perhaps is the worst character trait ever written for a main character.