[one-star-rating]Vince Vaughn, Chris Pratt, Cobie Smulders[/one-star-rating]
The French Canadian comedy Starbuck, the far superior film this is based on, had a charming, bumbling hero we could both disparage and love. Vince Vaughn just never finds that humorous magic. He and the filmmakers are trying too hard to be what they’re not.
So, do you want to see a soggy comedy where Vaughn slowly sneaks into becoming Dad of the Year? Do we even think this is feasible?
Delivery Man stumbles through tone shifts, from oversweet platitudes to small chuckles to wildly gross-out moments. What once felt wonderful now feels contrived. What once was light and sweet now seems creepy.
Delivery Man’s filmmakers couldn’t decide how to remake a kind little comedy like the original. (And why bother, when fluffy little Starbuck is just fine? The only reason to refilm it is because many American moviegoers have a furious prejudice against subtitles.) With Vaughn in the mix, there had to be unnecessary moments of crassness and slovenly improvisation, which further ruin the experience, especially because the overall film wants to convince that it’s meaningful.
Vaughn is a n’er-do-well who aggressively donated sperm for cash in his younger years. In his middle age, a prolonged adolescence, he finds he’s fathered over 500 kids through a sperm bank error. Several of the kids are now suing to know who their biological father is, and Vaughn doesn’t want to own up. Instead, because he’d love to marry his pregnant girlfriend (Smulders), he secretly slinks around trying to be a stealth wonderdad to a few dozen of his offspring. In his pursuit, he learns a lot of stuff you can also read on bumper stickers.
The only good part here is Pratt as Vaughn’s best friend (who seems to know Vaughn, and most other absent fathers, are incapable of such a magical transformation).
Like the first version, there is too much here, a debt to the mob, a cop girlfriend, and a pot-growing scheme cluttering everything up. Original writer/director Ken Scott also leads this one, but he cannot seem to find the affability or ease he once captured. Perhaps it’s because so much of this is an inferior copy.
What is also noticeable here is the total lack of good mom images. Vaughn’s is conscripted to the background. None of the 143 kids’ moms have any say or influence, or even scenes. Instead we have Vaughn creeping around and having epiphanies.
[rating-key]
Everything here is played to manipulate audiences. In some scenes, we’re supposed to laugh. In others, we’re supposed to wonder at boorish Vaughn finally playing someone semi-likeable and admirable. Group hugs and swelling music mean to bring tears. Then, we’ll go back to some gross-out humor, because that’s what filmmakers know we expect from a Vaughn film.
With all these machinations, Delivery Man desperately wants us to believe, through bonding with Vince Vaughn, no less, that “sperm donor” and “dad” can be interchangeable terms. I never once believed in any of this.
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