Mr. Deeds

When Longfellow Deeds, a small-town pizzeria owner and poet, inherits $40 billion from his deceased uncle, he quickly begins rolling in a different kind of dough. Moving to the big city, Deeds finds himself besieged by opportunists all gunning for their piece of the pie. Babe, a television tabloid reporter, poses as an innocent small-town girl to do an exposé on Deeds.

Critics largely dismissed this Capra remake as a stale, charmless retread, with particular skepticism aimed at the lead performances. Audiences, especially younger viewers, were far more forgiving — a gap that defined the film's reception and still does.