Will Adam Sandler rise again to the box office heights he achieved with 1998's The Waterboy ($161.5 million) and 1999's Big Daddy ($163.5 million) or will Mr. Deeds repeat the misdeed of 2000's Little Nicky ($39.5 million)? Critics are guessing that it's likely to suffer the latter fate -- but then, Adam Sandler films have rarely been received well by critics. This one is certainly no exception, with Mike Clark in USA Today calling it a "dumbing down" of the Frank Capra classic that "virtually defines a comedy that's strongly mediocre." Virtually all the reviews compare the remake -- unfavorably -- with the Capra original. Jack Mathews writes in the New York Daily News: "Where Capra's Mr. Deeds [Goes to Town] was intended as a feel-good bromide for a country deep in the Depression, Sandler's version is merely a fish-out-of-water sitcom for people who didn't get enough of his shtick on Saturday Night Live." John Anderson in Newsday takes the criticism a step further: "Mr. Deeds is nothing if not a cynical parody of the very Capra-cornish virtues it purports to extol," he writes. Several writers suggest that the film is so out of sync with the esteemed original that it verges on sacrilege. "Mr. Deeds is mostly terrible, a shambles of a comedy that looks as if it was shot by a tabloid news crew," comments Elvis Mitchell in the New York Times, and Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal calls it "a puerile pilfering" of the Capra film. And Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times comments that the only thing remarkable about the remake "is how lacking it is in any of the things, from humor to emotion to halfway decent acting, we might go to a movie for." On the other hand, Wesley Morris, the new film critic for the Boston Globe, argues, "This remake is not the act of heresy you'd expect from the meatheads responsible for Sandler's past vehicles." He goes on to say, "Against all odds, the shoddiness has its own endearments." And Rick Groen in the Toronto Globe & Mail begins his review by remarking: "First, the shocking news: Mr. Deeds is a surprisingly funny movie. Surprising, because it's an Adam Sandler flick -- need I say more?"