Delivery Man. (15.)
Directed by Ken Scott.
Starring Vince Vaughn, Chris Pratt, Cobie Smulders, Bobby Moynihan and Simon Delaney. 105 mins.
The Delivery Man may just be about to introduce a new gold standard by which critics judge all future foreign language movies. You may THINK you like that Spanish language dramedy about the toilet built for the Pope’s visit, or the Danish drama about the kindergarten teacher wrongly accused of being a paedophile or the French language film about the former sperm donor who discovers he has fathered 533 children; BUT, would you still like it if it was in English and starred Vince Vaughn? Consider that, and then decide how many stars to give it.
Delivery Man is a remake of a French Canadian film Starbuck. On Rotten Tomatoes, the website that provides an aggregate of critics’ scores, it is resting at 65% fresh. It was successful enough that writer/ director Ken Scott has been prevailed upon to relocate 300 miles south from Montreal to New York and give the star role to Vince Vaughn. This new version is rating at 38% rotten, but it is almost exactly the same film that critics generally liked when it was in French.
Vaughn has some previous here having played Norman Bates in Van Sant’s shot for shot, scene for scene remake of Psycho. That project was a fascinating insight into the importance of context. There is something head-scratching and rather disturbing about how the addition of a colour and the passing of four decades somehow completely neutered one of cinema’s creepiest films. The evidence of Delivery Man is that reading subtitles somehow gives a film some kind of weight.
Of course the problem may be Vaughn (who was a horrible Norman Bates in Psycho, the only member of the cast that wasn’t on a par with the original.) Audiences seem to have tired of his shtick and though you wouldn’t necessarily criticise them for that, he’s rather good here; his dopey lug face and man boobed physique really suits the part. Chris Pratt has the best lines as his inept lawyer who is tyrannised by his unruly children. His impassioned rants against fatherhood are a necessary balance to the movie’s sentimental view of parenting.
It’s a soppy film but with genuine heart and laughs. Wozniak (Vaughn) is a waster delivery truck driver in the family meat business who suddenly discovers he has fathered 533 children during a frantic, money raising period of sperm donation two decades earlier and that 142 of them are suing to find out the identity of their biological father. Even as he defends the case Wozniak can’t resist popping in anonymously on his children’s lives, to help and advise these people he helped bring into the world. The set up seems crude but it is done with considerable charm. It’s a smudgy fingered It’s A Wonderful Life.
Directed by Ken Scott.
Starring Vince Vaughn, Chris Pratt, Cobie Smulders, Bobby Moynihan and Simon Delaney. 105 mins.
The Delivery Man may just be about to introduce a new gold standard by which critics judge all future foreign language movies. You may THINK you like that Spanish language dramedy about the toilet built for the Pope’s visit, or the Danish drama about the kindergarten teacher wrongly accused of being a paedophile or the French language film about the former sperm donor who discovers he has fathered 533 children; BUT, would you still like it if it was in English and starred Vince Vaughn? Consider that, and then decide how many stars to give it.
Delivery Man is a remake of a French Canadian film Starbuck. On Rotten Tomatoes, the website that provides an aggregate of critics’ scores, it is resting at 65% fresh. It was successful enough that writer/ director Ken Scott has been prevailed upon to relocate 300 miles south from Montreal to New York and give the star role to Vince Vaughn. This new version is rating at 38% rotten, but it is almost exactly the same film that critics generally liked when it was in French.
Vaughn has some previous here having played Norman Bates in Van Sant’s shot for shot, scene for scene remake of Psycho. That project was a fascinating insight into the importance of context. There is something head-scratching and rather disturbing about how the addition of a colour and the passing of four decades somehow completely neutered one of cinema’s creepiest films. The evidence of Delivery Man is that reading subtitles somehow gives a film some kind of weight.
Of course the problem may be Vaughn (who was a horrible Norman Bates in Psycho, the only member of the cast that wasn’t on a par with the original.) Audiences seem to have tired of his shtick and though you wouldn’t necessarily criticise them for that, he’s rather good here; his dopey lug face and man boobed physique really suits the part. Chris Pratt has the best lines as his inept lawyer who is tyrannised by his unruly children. His impassioned rants against fatherhood are a necessary balance to the movie’s sentimental view of parenting.
It’s a soppy film but with genuine heart and laughs. Wozniak (Vaughn) is a waster delivery truck driver in the family meat business who suddenly discovers he has fathered 533 children during a frantic, money raising period of sperm donation two decades earlier and that 142 of them are suing to find out the identity of their biological father. Even as he defends the case Wozniak can’t resist popping in anonymously on his children’s lives, to help and advise these people he helped bring into the world. The set up seems crude but it is done with considerable charm. It’s a smudgy fingered It’s A Wonderful Life.
