Summaries

Synopsis

When millionaire Preston Blake expires while climbing Mount Everest, Blake Media, the news company he built up, is in danger of extinction. Blake's second-in-command Chuck Cedar wants to sell off the company, becoming richer (but putting the company's 50000 employees out of work). However, news comes of Blake's surviving relative, a nephew called Longfellow Deeds, so Cedar decides to track down Deeds and convince him to give up the company.

Deeds, it is discovered, works in his friend Jan's pizzeria in New Hampshire and is in fact a small-town bumpkin, with little knowledge of the world but possessing a kind-hearted easygoing nature. Taking advantage of this good nature, Cedar convinces Deeds to sell his shares in Blake Media to Cedar for $40 billion, but to work out all the legal details Deeds must come to New York for some days. Deeds arrives, and immediately causes waves: he makes friends with the staff, particularly the butler Lopez; he punches out a talented but profane football athlete; and he accidentally breaks apart the frozen body of his uncle Preston at the funeral.

Deeds's antics attract publicity, and a shrewd reporter named Babe Bennett decides to get closer to Deeds. She pretends to be mugged by her partner Marty, in sight of Deeds. Deeds punches out Marty and saves Babe (who introduces herself to him as Pam Dawson, a nurse from Iowa), and thus they begin dating. At first she gets great stories of Deeds beating up a bunch of snobby socialites, and rescuing a tenant from a burning building. And meanwhile, she has to frantically improvise when Deeds takes her on a surprise date to Dawson's home town of Winchestertonfeldville (which she made up and supposedly didn't exist).

Eventually, Babe falls in love with the kind-hearted Deeds and decides to reveal the truth about herself. Unfortunately, Deeds learns the truth on his own, thanks to a surreptitiously deceitful trick by Cedar, and discovering that the woman he loved has deceived him not only breaks Deeds's heart but shows him how naïve of city life he really is, and he sadly hands ownership of the company to Cedar and returns home.

With Deeds out of the way, Cedar makes arrangements for a shareholders' meeting. Babe arrives at Mandrake Falls, but first she has to survive a catfight with Jan, and then later falls into an icy river. Deeds rescues her, but he still cannot forgive her for having lied to her about herself. Despondent, she returns to New York, but finding Preston Blake's diary, looks through it...

With Deeds out of the way, Cedar makes arrangements for a Blake Media shareholders meeting, at which he convinces all the shareholders to sell off the company. At that moment, Deeds arrives, having become a shareholder due to him buying a single share previously, and makes an impassioned speech to all the shareholders. He gets them to talk about their childhood dreams and how they have grown up to be different people from then, and uses this clever discussion to get them not to give up on the company. But Cedar has control of the majority of the shares and the sale is approved.

However, Babe arrives and recites an event from Preston Blake's diary, where he had a one-night stand with a maid. This event is proof, that Blake has a son, and therefore Deeds's sale of his shares to Cedar is not legal. The real heir is revealed to be Lopez, who immediately takes control and fires Cedar. Babe and Deeds make up since she's earned back his trust from helping him. They leave for Mandrake Falls, with Lopez giving a farewell gift of a billion dollars.

At the end of the film, even though Deeds has returned home and still works in Jan's pizzeria, he's achieved success where it matters: he married Babe, he's bought Corvettes for all his friends, and a poem he wrote has been printed on greeting cards all over the world...