film review: Delivery Man (2014)

January 20, 2014   //    1 Comment

January’s traditionally the awards season, with the cinemas chock full of starrily reviewed films… but there’s still space in the cinemas for people who like their fare a little lighter. Delivery Man is one of those films.

Vince Vaughn stars as David Wozniak, a meat delivery man for the family butcher shop who, for reasons unknown, owes some unpleasant men $80,000 that he doesn’t have. Seems like a pretty typical story until a man shows up at his apartment to inform him that he is the anonymous father of 533 children, over a quarter of whom are suing to find him. A slightly more unusual situation to find yourself in.

Vince Vaughn’s output in recent years hasn’t exactly been stellar – he seems to be talking faster and faster in every single film and unfortunately for him, faster does not equal funny. More fortunately for him it looks like he might have finally recognised that.

Delivery Man is step away from the loud quick-fire delivery, playing-for-every-laugh-you-can-squeeze-out-of-it, he and other Hollywood comedians (I’m looking at you Will Ferrell) have become synonymous with.

Alongside Chris Pratt (of Parks and Recreation), Vince Vaughn steps up to the challenge of a slightly more dramatic film than usual. There’s still a few laughs but largely Delivery Man is about more serious fare. Of course this leads to an almost inevitable difficulty with tone. It’s admirable that the film deals with the sometime controversy around the psychological effects of anonymous sperm donation however… it’s a difficult subject for what is, basically, a fish-out-of-water comedy. It tries it’s best but it never really manages to marry the stories together.

Fans of Vince Vaughn, which I still count myself as – being in Swingers buys a lot of leeway with me – will be glad to see that there’s still some fight left in him. He’s still knows how to turn on the charm when he needs to. If only he did it a little more often…

So, if you’re looking for something a little fluffier than the likes of the fantastic 12 Years a Slave and The Wolf of Wall Street (and there’s nothing wrong with that) you might be pleasantly surprised by Delivery Man.


6.5/10