Delivery
Man is a Ken Scott remake of his
own film from two years prior, the R-rated French-language Canadian
film, Starbuck, which he co-wrote with Martin Petit.
It's a high-concept comedy that delivers basic sitcom-heavy
situations, and one's enjoyment will likely solely be influenced by
how much of a fan one is to its star, Vince Vaughn (The
Internship, The Watch), than
anything that is introduced into the farfetched plot that can't build
on much beyond the joke of its main premise.
Vaughn plays a 40-something underachiever named David Wozniak, a
delivery man for his family's meat business ("delivering the meat" is
perhaps a double entendre). Wozniak is as irresponsible at how
he manages his money as he is in his job and relationships, which
causes him to try just about anything to keep his head above water.
Through his lawyer friend Brett (Pratt,
Zero Dark Thirty), he learns that one of those schemes he had
tried back in the day comes back to him in a big way when it turns out
that the mass amount of sperm donations he had made to a fertility
clinic in his early adulthood has resulted in him becoming the
biological father to 533 now-adult children, some of whom have filed a
lawsuit against the clinic that misused Wozniak's grade-A sperm for
every pregnancy.
These children want to know who the mysterious donor named "Starbuck"
is, while Wozniak seeks to retain his anonymity. Yet, despite
not wanting to be found out, he's intrigued to see what has become of his
progeny, taking time to visit them under false identities to help
guide them in a fatherly way, without revealing that he is, in fact,
their father. Not only this, but his long-suffering girlfriend (Smulders,
The Avengers) reveals
that she is carrying his baby, leaving the man who never had children
before faced with the prospect that he may be the father to the most
amount of children of anyone on Earth.
For the umpteenth time, Vince Vaughn is playing a conniving slacker,
and his typical schtick is perhaps the only thing this film might have
going for it for his fans. We know that, by the end, he'll
eventually own up to all of his responsibilities, so until then, we
are treated to a cavalcade of scenes in which he must worm his way
into someone's good graces until he finally has to confront doing the
one thing he's been resisting all along: growing up. However,
even if Vaughn could play this role in his sleep (come to think of it,
he does seem to be sleepwalking through this one), he doesn't elevate
it the way he could in his prime, when his routine had been hip and
fresh These days, Vaughn is too much of a known
quantity, and too entrenched in his comfort zone playing slackers, perhaps so much
so that it reveals why he excels at them -- he's a consummate slacker
himself.
Perhaps instead of Scott remaking his own film, he should have
optioned it as what it is -- a sitcom -- wherein Wozniak visits a new
child every week and helps them with whatever contrived life-event
they happen to be needing a fatherly assistance in, rather than an
absurdly forced film in which all things come to a head at just the
right time. They could have called it, "How I Met My Father (and
Didn't Know it") or something to that effect. At least it wouldn't have had the plot turn on a
dime every two scenes, including such hard-to-swallow machinations as
owing $80,000 to the mob, dealing drugs, family business drama,
relationship issues that come to a head at the worst possible moments,
and the local amateur basketball league's inability to flourish.
Delivery Man is bad enough as a comedy by not being at least
competently funny in most regards, only occasionally stumbling into a
couple of mildly chuckle-worthy moments featuring the interplay of
Vaughn with his co-star Chris Pratt (claiming he "gained weight for
the role", though that was likely a joke), who is playing a man who
has a handful with his four young children, echoing how ridiculous
Wozniak's life might become should he own up to his over 500.
But writer-director Scott misses the boat by not building on this subtle humor,
playing just about everything as broad and obvious as possible,
including the ludicrous notion that this admittedly titillating story
would be the front page headline of every major newspaper in the
country. And you never see any of the real mothers or adoptive
fathers of any of these children, including one who ends up in the
hospital, which just makes all of these children feel like one big
Greek chorus that behave as a hive entity.
In its favor, the film's direction by Scott is fine, as well as its
score by Jon Brion (This is 40,
The Break-Up) that sees him try
valiantly to squeeze out that tear that the screenplay and
performances themselves couldn't muster on their own. But the script
is tired, needing not only more quality jokes, but more emphasis on
basic plausibility in order to give it the ring of truth to at least
find the tug at viewer's heartstrings as the movie nears its end
somewhat tolerable. The set-ups to the jokes are heavy-handed
and completely contrived, as Wozniak enters seemingly each of his
children's lives right at their greatest moment of need, with an actor
just on the verge of getting the role that will break him into the
business, or, even more tired, a junkie daughter who is right about to
potentially die of an overdose mere seconds after he has entered her
life as a phony pizza delivery man with a heart.
Without many laughs, truly poignant moments of drama, and without
even a performance by Vaughn doing something we haven't seen him do a
dozen times
before, it's all a bust in the comedy department. For
a film full of so many 'delivery' motifs, it's ironic that it doesn't
deliver on any level.
