DELIVERY MAN

Stars: Vince Vaughan, Chris Pratt, Cobie Smulders, Jack Reynor, Bobby Moynihan, Britt Robertson, Simon Delaney, Adam Chanler-Berat and Andrzej Blumenfeld.
Writer: Ken Scott; based on the original screenplay Starbuck by Ken Scott and Martin Petit.
Director: Ken Scott.

Rating: 3.5/5

Affable schlub Vince Vaughan has coasted for too long on the laconic, cool-guy schtick, playing charming if shallow leads in charming, shallow movies. In Ken Scott’s Delivery Man, he seems determined to give his trademark cocky riff a deeper element.

The actor has always been an engaging screen presence, often compelling and immensely likable, but he has found it hard to convince in nuanced roles that rely upon more than his natural charisma (and which kicked off his career so memorably 17 years ago in Doug Liman’s Swingers). Delivery Man represents a second shot in as many years at a more complex comedic persona; Ron Howard’s The Dilemma hinted at a new direction, even if the film was a messy letdown.

Interestingly, there is also a thematic component that recalls the older-skewing comedies of the late 70s and early 80s, such as David Steinberg’s Paternity (1981) or Blake Edwards’ The Man of Loved Women (1983), in which the consequences and responsibilities of a sexual lifestyle choice are explored. Like those films, Delivery Man (pun-iest title of the year, one hopes) doesn’t always nail that difficult comedy/drama balance, but goes pretty close.

Vaughan is David Wozniak, a down-on-his-luck meat truck driver whose lack of forward momentum in life is recognised by all but himself. In a briskly edited introduction that recalls Bill Murray’s ultimate-bad-day opening sequence in Stripes, Wozniak lets down his family (dad Andrzej Blumenfeld; Simon Delaney and SNL regular Bobby Moynihan) and is cast adrift by his pregnant girlfriend, Emma (Cobie Smulders).

Things get worse when it is revealed that a class action case is being initiatedd by many of the 533 young adults that are alive thanks to sperm samples donated by an anonymous figure known as ‘Starbuck’; in actuality, the moniker Wozniak adopted when sperm donations were his primary source of income. When told of this by his scruffy lawyer buddy, Brett (a terrific Chris Pratt, who scores the film’s biggest laughs), Dave secretly sets out to meet and help his offspring. These scenes are erratic; some prove very funny and occasionally moving (David’s discovery one of his sons is profoundly intellectually handicapped), while others are overplayed and unconvincing, particularly a worthless subplot involving annoying vegetarian, Viggo (Adam Chanler-Berat).

Writer/director Ken Scott has adapted his French-language Canadian film Starbuck very precisely, barely straying from the script structure, dialogue or shot selection he employed on that 2011 festival hit. This may prove a double-edged sword for Delivery Man; the integrity of the original is intact, but it does not always play like the feel-good romp mainstream audiences will expect from studio Dreamworks and its leading man. However, it is plainly evident that funny-man Vaughan is focussed on a more mature leading man slot in Hollywood’s top-tier and Delivery Man is his most convincing calling-card effort towards that end.