Certain movies we end up watching again and again, sometimes because they are so good and others for reasons we can’t totally explain.

Those repeat viewings offer the chance to pick up on smaller details we don’t notice when we’re focused on big-picture things like plot and character relationships.  In the past few weeks I’ve had two experiences with movies I’ve seen a dozen times — tiny moments in the film that could arguably be used to totally re-evaluate my perception of the characters.

I’ll tackle “Mr. Deeds” in this post since I saw it today, with another soon on “Snatch.”

I own this movie on DVD but happened to catch the ending on TV while flipping around this morning.  If you’re not familiar, the basic premise is that Longfellow Deeds (Adam Sandler) is a small-town pizza shop owner who writes greeting cards in his spare time.  His immensely rich great-uncle dies with no other heirs, leaving Deeds with a multi-billion-dollar fortune.  Near the end of the film, a heartbroken Deeds returns to the pizza shop, where he has a section of wall covered in his greeting cards.  He starts to rip them down, and the camera cuts to a close-up shot:

He describes the cards as his dream and says that he once came close to having one purchased by Hallmark.  Some of the ones he shares are a bit ridiculous, with the underlying joke being that this is the reason the greeting card companies haven’t warmed to his work.

But this shot says a lot.  The card with “Your Special” on the front shows a fundamental problem with his efforts.  Anyone who works in a word-heavy environment develops a kind of grammatical arrogance, making it hard to take certain things like using the wrong “your” seriously.

I am willing to accept the interpretation that this card may mean something like “Your Special Flower” but since that strikes me as a strange thing to give to someone else, I’m not completely buying that argument.

The Deeds character is portrayed in a way that is entirely sympathetic.  You’re supposed to see him as this really grounded guy who could be doing great things if given the chance, and yet he’s entirely content to live his simple life with the pizza parlor.  The basic grammatical issue with this card coupled with the off-beat nature of the others we know about bring up the possibility that maybe he isn’t that talented after all.  It isn’t that Hallmark is being unfair, but rather that they are rightfully ignoring him the way he would look down on someone who came to the pizza shop and told him to put cotton candy on the pies.

He remains a sweet guy who doesn’t outwardly change with the sudden ballooning of his bank account.  But his return to the pizza shop in the end is less a statement of commitment to hometown values than the reality that he had no other options.