Deliver Us from This Movie

delivery-man-feature

As a compulsive Oscar statistician, a (sometimes) film critic for this website, and a film-lover if not quite a cinephile, I’m aware that the films I see are sometimes limited in scope. That is to say, I see the kind of films that someone like me is apt to want to see. I don’t get to venture out of my tunnel vision very often (what am I saying? I get to do it all the time, I just choose not to). That’s why I like when my dad comes to visit me for Thanksgiving weekend, because we end up compromising with each other and meeting one another halfway, so I end up watching stuff I’d never have otherwise watched.

This is how I ended up in the audience of Delivery Man, starring Vince Vaughn. Well, “starring” is probably the wrong word, because that suggests he’s in it. His body is there, but everything else about him is off somewhere else, dreaming of a better film he could have been in. Vaughn’s a charming actor but he’s been having trouble figuring out what to do with his slacker persona since he turned forty a few years ago; you kind of just look pathetic growing weed in your house and wearing a t-shirt and jeans once you’ve reached middle-age. Maybe that sounds ungenerous, but it’s a very real problem: it’s what sank The Internship earlier this year, and it’s one of like fifty things that sinks Delivery Man.

Another’s the premise. Even in the trailer, I couldn’t work this out: a guy donated sperm earlier in his life, and now finds out he has over 500 kids, and the kids have opened a lawsuit to try and meet him. So what? Either a) the confidentiality agreement he signed will hold up and the kids won’t get to meet whoever their biological father is, or b) they win and they met him. Where do you go from there? Why is David (Vaughn) fighting this case? Why is this even a case in the first place? He signed a confidentiality agreement—what right could these kids possibly have to breach it?

As you’d expect, the film can’t keep this premise going for very long, and so fills it with something even more ludicrous: David’s lawyer Brett (Chris Pratt) has an envelope with profiles of the 143 of the over 500 kids who are suing, and gives it to David with the warning: “Don’t open it!” So…uh…why not just not give it to him? But whatever. David looks through the envelope when his curiosity gets the best of him one night and decides to check out who his kids are. This leads to him trying to be their “guardian angel,” helping them with their problems, aiding them as a father since they grew up fatherless. Well, first: if these kids were spawned from a sperm bank, odds are a few of them were born to couples who wanted a child (that’s what sperm banks are for, right?) so they probably have adoptive fathers, and second: even if they were born to single mothers, these single mothers, again, made the conscious choice to inseminate themselves, hence presumably were at least semi-competent at raising them, so actually the whole premise is a little offensive since it presumes that a financially stable single mother who makes the conscious choice to have a child on her own will end up raising a miserable child who simply wants a father.

But whatever. David at one point pulls out a profile of a child and his face drops: one of his children is disabled, and though the disability is never specifically named, it has incapacitated the child so that he can neither walk nor speak. This leads to David doing his best to spend time with the kid without ever talking to him, learning to be sensitive to someone else’s needs. And I guess that’s supposed to be touching, though all I could think the whole time was: how did this kid file a lawsuit if he can’t talk or move? But whatever. Even with this guardian angel premise, the film still doesn’t have enough material to fill a whole two hours, so it also brings in a debt that David owes to some guys who run a pyramid scheme (a pretty intense one, evidently, since they come over and try to drown him one night, but whatever). And even then it can’t sustain the whole running time, so it also throws in a pregnant girlfriend (played by Robin Scherbatsky!), which subplot goes exactly nowhere since David actually wants to be a father from the first second he finds out, and is never less than a totally attentive and loving and giving boyfriend, but whatever.

The film culminates in a scene at the hospital as David’s kid is being born, and I’ll admit I ended up kicking myself and really, truly hating whoever made this film for making a lump form in my throat (“Congratulations, from your real family”), and it’s near-comical the way the film seems to have forgotten that David still hasn’t told his girlfriend about the 500+ kids thing and then handles it in about fourteen seconds (I swear, Colbie Smoulders has three consecutive lines that are “Yes I’ll marry you,” “You’re never allowed to see this child again,” and “I’d be honored if you’d be this baby’s father”).

I’m glad I ventured out—Delivery Man wasn’t the only film I saw—but, well…let’s just say I’m glad there are twelve months until next Thanksgiving. But whatever.

Ted McLoof

About Ted McLoof

Ted McLoof is a writer at Rookerville and teaches fiction at the University of Arizona. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Minnesota Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Gertrude, Monkeybicycle, Sonora Review, Hobart, DIAGRAM, The Associative Press, and elsewhere.He's recently been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net Award. He is very cool and very handsome and he'd like to buy you a drink.

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