Movie Review: Delivery Man

A typical lazy Vince Vaughn programmer (a guy donates sperm and fathers over 500 kids due to an error at the clinic and they want to know his identity) except that it feels a little bit quieter and moodier. It’s hard to say if this is because the film is trying to be honestly more reflective and thoughtful or if the comedy is just so lame that not even Vaughn can pretend his heart is really in it.

What Works: The comedy in the first ten minutes is painful, and it’s disheartening to see Vaughn play one more loser who can’t get it together (all the old cliched jokes about money problems, being unreliable in relationships, and ridiculously bad investments are there). So it’s a mild relief when the film sort-of gives up on laughs fairly early on and starts to become more of a family-drama, not quite a “drama” but certainly something a little more sober than a mainstream comedy. There’s a couple of deeper scenes sprinkled throughout with Vaughn’s immigrant father that feel like they were inserted from a different, better movie. Part of this movie feels like it really wants to say something about fatherhood, and it’s disappointing that it never quite does. I was rooting for it, and if I didn’t care at all, then it wouldn’t have mattered…

What Doesn’t Work: The movie’s advertised as a broad comedy, and isn’t, so half the audience will leave disappointed based off that. There’s a weird lack of energy all throughout that makes the movie feel lazier than it probably intends. Even the fact that I can’t tell whether it wanted to be semi-dramatic or just never worked hard enough to sell its jokes gives off a real half-hearted vibe. There’s also a plot line with one of Vaughn’s “kids” finding out who he is and blackmailing him…for alone time. This storyline never goes dark enough even though it’s already halfway creepy. Plus, there’s a fundamental hole right in the center of this thing: if Vaughn is such a feckless loser who’s never done a damn thing right, why on Earth wouldn’t he want to come out of hiding as the father of these kids? He’d be an overnight reality star and most of his very dire money problems (loan sharks almost kill him at one point) would vanish.

What I Would Have Done Differently: Not built the tension around something that’s obvious and suspense-less (of course he should reveal himself as the father…), and focused the movie more around the characters. None of his kids are all that interesting (they seem mostly defined by their jobs), so why not give them more defining personalities or more to do? The bonding he does with them needs to feel more real than it does here…And even though this is a Thanksgiving feel-good movie for the whole family, I would have rather seen what this thing looks like as a Spring, comedy-comedy for the selfish asshole: Vaughn’s character becomes a reality star in the first five minutes and has to pretend to care about all these kids to keep his show on the air.