Friday, March 28, 2014

Delivery Man

Looks like Vince Vaughn has decided to continue being in bad movies.  However, compared to The Internship, Delivery Man is a huge step up.

The concept is exceptionally ridiculous.  Vaughn plays David Wozniak.  David has a massive debt to a loan shark, a pregnant girlfriend, a crop of weed, and no ambition.  To complicate matters, it turns out that he's the biological father to over 500 kids.  How does this happen?  In his youth, David donated to a sperm bank.  Thing is, his sperm is of such high quality that it soon became the only sperm the bank gave out.  Now, a large contingent of his spawn are contesting his privacy contract with the sperm bank.  Curiosity gets the better of him and he begins covertly checking in on his "children." 

Not only is this plot ridiculous, but this is a remake.  It wasn't enough to make this junk once.  The biggest problem the film suffers from is that it is intensely unfunny.  Chris Pratt almost manages to turn his lines into chuckles, but even he can't help this script.  But the anti-laughs are soon replaced by light-hearted sentimentality.  This is where Delivery Man elevates itself above the horrific The Internship.  Whereas The Internship is basically a lazy, cynical advertisement, Delivery Man's sentimentality has at least a modicum of sincerity.  It just fails at being any good.  And I have more respect for a movie that tries and fails than a movie that aims for mediocrity (and still fails).

Delivery Man would've benefited from a removal of all but a few of the "sperm donor" kids.  If it would've been about 3 or 4 kids seeking him out, we could've really gotten to know them and spent some real time developing their relationships with David.  Instead, the characters all blend together. 

At the end of the day, it's a bad movie.  The concept asks too much of our suspension of disbelief.  Also, the kids are super creepy.  It is stated that they just want to know where half their chromosomes came from, but it immediately becomes clear that they all view David as their actual father.

Don't watch Delivery Man.  If the highest praise I can give it is that it's better than The Internship (and shorter too), you know it's terrible.  Drinking Windex is better than The Internship.

3.5 out of 10

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