Director: Ken Scott
Talent: Vince Vaughn, Chris Pratt, Cobie Smulders, Jack Reynor
Release Date: 10th January 2014
The transition of Vince Vaughn’s screen persona from silver-tongued pick-up-artist (Swingers, Wedding Crashers) to a psychotic avatar of American paternalism (2012’s The Watch) was, in retrospect, an inevitability. Some might say it hasn’t been much of a transition at all. Whatever it is, it reaches its moment of purest truth in Delivery Man, in which David Wozniak (Vaughn) has a class-action lawsuit brought against his privacy rights by hundreds of his biological children, now adults, conceived from sperm he donated at a seemingly frantic rate some twenty years hence. In guardian angel fashion, he visits his offspring anonymously, helping them with whatever problems they happen to be conveniently facing at the time. Interestingly, it is only his daughter Kristen (Britt Robertson) whose problem ― heroin addiction ― is explicitly attributed to the absence of a father figure (before his arrival). Delivery Man aims at heartwarming, but ends up a grotesque theatre of patriarchal fantasy. On second thoughts, it might warm the hearts of some.
Words: Oisín Murphy-Hall
