Running time: 103 minutes
Starring: Vince Vaughn, Chris Pratt, Cobie Smulders
Who to see it with: Someone who hasn't seen Starbuck
David:
Delivery Man is a tough movie for me to review. I've made no secret of my love of the original Canadian film, Starbuck, so it is tough to judge the English language remake of it. The story is exactly the same: constant screw-up David Wozniak (Vaughn) finds out that through some unfortunate hospital circumstances involving his previous sperm donations, he has fathered more than 500 children. To make matters worse, 133 of his previously unknown kids have filed a lawsuit attempting to uncover his identity. David decides to secretly begin meeting his children and entering their lives without them realizing who he is, and the deeper he gets, the tougher his desire to conceal his identity becomes.
The tough thing about watching Delivery Man is that I feel like I've seen the movie before, which is understandable because they share the same story, much of the same script, and the same writer / director. The situations and characters are the same, and a lot of the jokes and dialog are verbatim from the English subtitles of the original movie (even some of the translations that weren't perfect). This is fine if you didn't see Starbuck--the theater was filled with laughs at a lot of the jokes and situations--but the original had so much more heart. Vaughn is fine in his role as Wozniak, but Patrick Huard did it so much better. Same with David's girlfriend, Emma; the Canadian film portrayed her as a more likable character. And I liked a lot of the kids from the first movie more than in this one. However, Delivery Man does make a few changes for the better. There are more scenes with David's friend's young children that are a welcome addition and provide some very cute moments. The courtroom scene is done better, some of the plot points have been tweaked, and the movie has been updated with references to Facebook, Twitter, and some other mainstream media sources that make it feel more America. There are also a few callbacks to the original that I noticed: a Canadian flag at a basketball game and one of the actors from Starbuck reprises his prominent role. But overall, I feel like the original movie is still the better overall experience. That being said, Delivery Man is still a very funny film, mostly because it had such a phenomenal original to build off of. If you must see it in English or love Vince Vaughn, then see this one.
See it.
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