DELIVERY MAN (2013)

Genre: Comedy/Drama
Director: Ken Scott
Cast: Vince Vaughn, Chris Pratt, Cobie Smulders, Britt Robertson, Jack Reynor, Bobby Moynihan
RunTime: 1 hr 45 mins
Rating: PG13 (Some Sexual References)
Released By: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Official Website: https://www.facebook.com/DeliveryManMovie
 
Opening Day: 1 January 2014

Synopsis: From DreamWorks Pictures comes "Delivery Man," the story of affable underachiever David Wozniak, whose mundane life is turned upside down when he finds out that he fathered 533 children through sperm donations he made twenty years earlier. In debt to the mob, rejected by his pregnant girlfriend, things couldn't look worse for David when he is hit with a lawsuit from 142 of the 533 twenty-somethings who want to know the identity of the donor. As David struggles to decide whether or not he should reveal his true identity, he embarks on a journey that leads him to discover not only his true self but the father he could become as well.

Movie Review:

If the premise of ‘Delivery Man’ sounds familiar to you, that’s because you’ve probably seen it played out in ‘Starbuck’, a French-Canadian farce that has a similar premise. Written and directed by the same filmmaker Ken Scott, it is the high-concept story of a ne'er-do-well who in his stoned-out cash-strapped youth donated sperm anonymously to a fertility clinic and discovers one day that he is the biological father to a horde of 533 children. Pretty jaw-dropping isn’t it - what’s more, 143 of them have filed charges to find out just who their progenitor is.

In Americanising his film, Scott has turned his adult-skewing comedy into a heart-tugging film about fatherhood and family. Only vestiges remain of the dirty jokes that was in the original - such as how its title was the pseudonym of its lead character David Wozniak which arose as the name of a famously fertile Holstein bull; instead, Scott has made a family-friendly studio film for the holidays which relocates the action to Brooklyn but keeps most of the plot twists and sentimentalities intact. We won’t go into comparing which was the better film, but suffice to say that much of the charm and heart of the original remains very much alive here.

At first glance, David seems cut from the same cloth as many of the characters which Vince Vaughn has played - including this summer’s ‘The Internship’ with Owen Wilson. Indeed, his father entrusts him only to drive a truck for his family’s meat delivery business, and he runs a marijuana-growing business on the side to pay off his debts to the mob. Neither does he have much going for him in his relationship with his police officer girlfriend Emma (Cobie Smulders), who has about had it with his flaky non-committal and irresponsible ways. And yet there remains something oddly endearing about the character he plays here, even more so we dare say than the rest of the quintessential man-child types he often portrays.

As such narratives go, you know that David’s newfound fatherly status will force him to grow up. Against the advice of his best buddy cum lawyer Brett (Chris Pratt), David looks inside the dossier containing the faces and profiles on many of his children and searches them out, skulking and sidling alongside them to understand and get involved even in their daily lives - among them, an NBA star, a junkie, a street musician, a lifeguard, an aspiring actor, and a profoundly disabled guy. Like a guardian angel, David helps where he can, lends counsel to others, and realises the meaning of taking responsibility in the process of growing into the role of a father.

Cynical though you may be of the Disney-fied premise, Scott tells the story with good-natured humour and genuine sweetness, making it somewhat impossible to resist the appeal of the promise of naturalistic magic that this juridical fairy tale offers. Vaughn’s interactions with Britt Robertson’s troubled female teenager with a drug problem, Dave Patten's struggling street musician and Adam Chanler-Berat's existentialism-driven goth brim with warmth - though none more so than his wordless ones with a wheelchair-bound Sebastien Rene, guaranteed to be tearjerker. And Vaughn on his part drops all pretense, oozing sincerity and empathy as the titular character going through late life-changing lessons.

Yes, there are so many other ways you could go wrong with a holiday trifle, but this broad comedy that sometimes tries too hard to tug at its audience’s heartstrings at least has its heart in the right place. At the very least, you can be assured that it achieves what a feel-good holiday film should do - making you feel a whole lot better coming out than going in. That, pun intended, is probably enough to say that it has delivered. 

Movie Rating:

(Nothing more - or less - than a feel-good holiday trifle that has Vince Vaughn once again playing his quintessential man-child screen persona)

Review by Gabriel Chong