Delivery Man (12A) - film review

Cobie Smulders and Vince Vaughn in 'Delivery Man'

The premise seems funny enough: Vince Vaughn is a hapless delivery driver, in debt to the mob, who discovers that he has fathered 533 children through sperm donations he made 20 years before. Now, many of these children are suing to discover his identity and his cop girlfriend (Cobie Smulders) is pregnant with his first “real” child.

Writer-director Ken Scott has already made a well-received Canadian version of the film, Starbuck. Somehow, though, Delivery Man just doesn’t get where it wants to go. Vaughn’s character, David Wozniak, is supposed to be a lovable slob with a good heart but there is nothing funny in scenes which show mobsters trying to drown him in his bath because of his unpaid debts. The sentimentality is on the cloying side. (A final reel mass hug is especially toe-curling.) The best moments here come courtesy of the engagingly deadpan Chris Pratt as David’s would-be lawyer friend, a single father with four precocious kids and a mother who terrifies him.

Director Ken Scott, 103 mins Starring: Vince Vaughn, Chris Pratt, Cobie Smulders