Delivery Man – Film
David Wozniak is a meat delivery driver. He also owes money to the mob. He has a girlfriend that can’t trust him. And he’s the father of 533 children, in the new film Delivery Man.
Wozniak, played by Vince Vaughn, works for the family meat business in New York City – Wozniak & Sons. He also happens to owe $80,000 to the mob. His girlfriend Emma (Cobie Smulders) is pregnant, and she doesn’t even want him to be in their kid’s life. David is also not very good at his job, according to his father Mikolaj (Andrzej Blumenfeld), his meat deliveries are always four hours late. So when one day David finds a lawyer at his house who announces to him that he has fathered 533, how can his life get any worse?
David realizes that his college days are coming back to haunt him as he was a very frequent donor to the local sperm bank to help him pay his way through college. And unfortunately, according to the lawyer, the sperm bank ended up using all of his sperm (instead of the other donors) to impregnate woman, and now 142 of these children have filed a class action lawsuit to find out who their real father is.
David definitely does not want to be known as the father. He also decides that it is time to step up and be a man and to try to prove to Emma that he will be a good father to their child. David enlists his best friend and lawyer Brett (Chris Pratt) to represent him in court to make sure his name does not get out, especially as he doesn’t want Emma to find out as well. Brett hands over to David a package which includes all of ‘his children’s’ profiles, so what does David do? He decides to start meeting them, one by one (anonymously of course). The first on the list is a basketball player for the New York Knicks. The second kid he visits happens to work at a barista who is an aspiring actor, so David works one of his shifts so that he can go to an acting audition. The third child he visits, Kristen (Britt Robertson) happens to take a drug overdose while he visits, so it is up to him to save her and make sure she goes to work and stays on the right path. Other children he visits include a lifeguard, a drunk, a nail salon worker, a busker, and a severely retarded son, who he visits quite often and wants to build a relationship with. He also tells the boy that he is his father.
As he gets to meet more and more of ‘his’ kids, they form one large support group and have called themselves Starbuck (the alias name he used at the sperm bank), and with his girlfriend about to give birth, David is ready for more responsibility then what he can handle.
Delivery Man is a film that won’t change the world, but it is a cute and funny look at a man who has no cares and responsibilities in life who all of a sudden has more than what he can handle. Vaughn is very good and funny in this role. We are used to seeing him in similar roles but with worse scripts. In Delivery Man, directed by Ken Scott, we have sympathy for him and at the same time want to cheer him on to step up to the plate. It is worth checking out on a sunny or rainy day.
Deliver Man is a re-telling of the 2011 French-Canadian film Starbuck, also directed by Scott.
