Delivery Man, 2013.
Written and Directed by Ken Scott.
Starring Vince Vaughn, Chris Pratt, Cobie Smulders, Andrzej Blumenfeld and Simon Delaney.
SYNOPSIS:
An affable underachiever finds out he’s fathered 533 children through anonymous donations to a fertility clinic 20 years ago. Now he must decide whether or not to come forward when 142 of them file a lawsuit to reveal his identity.
Vince Vaughn hasn’t had a lot of luck in recent years when it comes to picking good roles. Ever since his smash hit Wedding Crashers in 2005 things have seemed to go downhill. From Fred Claus and The Watch to last year’s lackluster The Internship it’s just been one critical and financial failure after another. Vaughn’s latest film, Delivery Man, tries to be somewhat different from his recent roles but ultimately ends up on the same level as those films.
David (Vince Vaughn) is a nice guy but he’s somewhat of an underachiever. He could work harder at his job as well as in his relationship with his newly pregnant girlfriend Emma (Cobie Smulders), who doesn’t believe that David is the right man to be a father. Things change even more for David when he finds out that he’s the biological father of 533 kids from donating mass amounts of sperm in his 20s. Of those 533, 142 of the kids have filed a lawsuit against him to reveal his identity. Now David must decide if he should reveal himself to his many kids or keep his identity a secret.
There really isn’t a whole lot to say about this film because while it’s not particularly bad, it’s definitely far from good. In the early going the film is just fine, it has some pretty decent laughs and the story is somewhat interesting. But as it pushes along the tone changes to be more sentimental throughout the latter half and the story just doesn’t work quite as well when it gets a little too serious. The sentimentality here is just a little too schmaltzy and feels overdone when it could have been handled a lot better.
Despite it’s shortcomings Vince Vaughn actually gives one of his better performances in quite some time. His performance feels genuine and not phoned in like a lot of his recent roles have felt. However, other than the always reliable Chris Pratt the rest of the cast doesn’t do much to help. They don’t get a chance to do much as they all have pretty limited screentime and Cobie Smulders is underused, leaving her character to feel almost pointless at times.
Delivery Man has a few laughs here and there and a surprisingly good performance from Vince Vaughn but it ultimately falls flat in a lot of areas keeping it from being a decent film.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Jake Peffer
Originally published June 9, 2014. Updated April 12, 2018.
