The ideal family supposedly has two children, the husband and wife have steady jobs and they go about their life with a stable formalism.
Then there is David Wozniak (Vince Vaughn, “The Internship”) whom, unfortunately, does not have a normal life. He’s being hounded by less-than-pleasant and downright nasty thugs who want to collect on an $80,000 debt. His father and brothers, owners of the family butchery, don’t have faith in David’s ability to deliver beyond chauffeuring meat around the block and back to the storefront. However, David wants to change his life, but one, or rather 533 impediments, are standing between him and a satisfactory life.
Wozniak discovers that he’s both fathered, by way of anonymous donations to a fertility clinic, and managed to let down his 533 kids. As 142 of the kids launch a massive class action suit to find out the identity of “Starbuck,” the name which Wozniak took to assume anonymity, Wozniak utilizes his unidentified position to visit his children one by one becoming their “guardian angel.” Predictably, this complicates Wozniak’s desire to remain unnamed.
As a note-for-note remake by Ken Scott, who also directed the original Canadian production entitled “Starbuck,” Scott’s version of “Delivery Man” might as well have come with the credit of “Translated by.” “Deliver Man” hits almost all the same beats, jokes and emotionally resonant moments. It has a quasi-”Funny Games” equivalence with none the intrigue and depth of Michael Haneke’s original shot-for-shot intent of depicting unrelenting violence.
What transpires is a less-than-humorous, but not completely irksome experience. “Delivery Man” whizzes by at a fair pace, but then oscillates between questionable antics and modulatory affirmations of Wozniak’s virility and masculinity; as the opening sequence tracks over Wozniak apartment filled with every piece of sports equipment known to mankind.
The most fascinating aspect of “Delivery Man” is what amounts to a scrubbed behind the ears, ironed out and over starched remake and how it became as such. This final product was simply put through a Hollywood cheese grater, turning a moderately and thematically engaging independent movie into something that resembles the dullest output of Adam Sandler’s contemporary films.
Vaughn does an exemplary job of playing his archetype —— haggard, squalid, but altruistic and generous —— and a supporting cast including Cobie Smulders (“How I Met Your Mother”), whose character exists solely as a counterweight and motivated love interest, as well as a boon for motivation so Wozniak’s should learn to stop his continued adolescent, incompetent antics. Then there are Jessica Williams (“The Daily Show”), Chris Pratt (“Parks and Recreation”) and Bobby Moynihan (“Saturday Night Live”) who just are wasting away in the boring nullity of the proceedings.
The easy slash would be “Delivery Man” is a film that is incapable of delivering anything, but that would not be wholly true. Scott’s film is not completely without merit. There is some possibility that audiences might be curious enough to make the circuitous journey back to the far more dynamic “Starbuck.”
