ABOVE: Watch the trailer for Delivery Man.
TORONTO — Delivery Man, now in theatres, is about as Canadian as an American movie can be.
A remake of the acclaimed 2011 Quebec feature Starbuck, it is directed and co-written by Montreal’s Ken Scott and includes Vancouver’s Cobie Smulders and Quebec’s Sébastien René in its cast.
Vince Vaughn (who’s married to a Canadian) stars as a truck driver who — after making hundreds of donations to a sperm bank earlier in his life — finds out he fathered more than 500 children. When a group of them files a class action suit against the sperm bank seeking to reveal his identity, he struggles with whether to come forward.
Smulders plays his pregnant girlfriend and Chris Pratt is his buddy and lawyer.
Delivery Man has some stiff competition at the weekend box office. Is it good enough to justify avoiding the Catching Fire crowds? Or should audiences stay home and rent Starbuck?
Here’s a look at some of the reviews:
T’cha Dunlevy of the Montreal Gazette said Scott did a good job of remaking his own movie.
“Scott succeeds almost too well,” wrote Dunlevy. “Delivery Man feels like a pretty standard Hollywood comedy, with ups and downs, funny moments, lulls, strategically placed sappy scenes and an overall light, feel-good vibe.”
Dunlevy did find that “laugh-out-loud moments are few and far between.”
Jeannette Catsoulis of the New York Times also did find too many big laughs in the movie.
“Delivery Man is a soggy comedy more focused on stimulating your tear ducts than your funny bone,” she wrote.
Catsoulis described the movie as a “brazenly manipulative ode to fatherhood.”
At the Los Angeles Times, Betsy Sharkey didn’t need big laughs to be delighted by the movie.
She described it as “a heart-tugging new comedy” that is “warm as well as wry.”
Sharkey added: “So let’s just say, whatever your mood going in, you will likely feel a good deal better coming out.”
Washington Post critic Michael O’Sullivan compared Delivery Man to the original Canadian film.
“Starbuck was a funny and warm-hearted trifle. So is Delivery Man,” he opined.
O’Sullivan said Pratt is “a bit funnier” than Starbuck‘s Antoine Bertrand but Vaughn is “a teensy bit less loveable” than Patrick Huard.
At the Toronto Star, Peter Howell saw Delivery Man as a less edgy comedy than Starbuck.
“The movie has been prettified and Disneyfied so that all the rough edges are sanded off,” he wrote. “Jokes about masturbation and stud bulls, a big part of Starbuck, have been dialed way down.”
Howell said Vaughn’s “laconic demeanour robs the film of energy.”
He also took issue with the scene where the character meets his severely disabled son in a nursing home (played in both movies by Sébastien René).
“In Starbuck, Huard seems genuinely affected; in Delivery Man, Vaughn seems like he’s choosing the best camera angle for a feel-good moment.”
The movie’s biggest problem? “It’s built around a funny story that’s already been told, not that not ago,” wrote Howell. “It’s hard to tell the same joke twice. There’s really just one too many offspring in this scenario, and it’s Delivery Man.”
Eric Walkuski wrote on JoBlo that Delivery Man is manipulative — “sometimes shamefully so” — and “lays on the sap thick and often.
“Much of it feels too forced and overly sentimental,” he said.
Walkuski also took issue with the implausible storyline.
“Of course, we’re not here to buy this ludicrous story, but sometimes a movie strains your patience with just how far-fetched it’s willing to go, and Scott goes above and beyond the rational limits,” he wrote.
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