"Delivery Man" Movie Review

            If you, for some unfathomable reason, have not noticed how fast Vince Vaughn talks, then just pay attention to the pacing of this movie.

            Alright, I have seen the new Vince Vaughn movie, Deliver Man, which is also based off of a Canadian film called Starbuck. Anyway, in this review, I will talk about the acting, and then talk about the film in general. This film stars Vince Vaughn, Chris Pratt, Cobie Smulders, and Jack Reynor. Vince Vaughn plays the same role he has played in all of his movies for a long time, and is good at it. Chris Pratt is good as his character. Cobie Smulders is fine as her character, and so is Jack Reynor, even though he does overact a bit. Though, this was some alright acting for the acting.

 

            So now that you know that I liked the acting of the film, I can now tell you that that is one of the only aspects of the film I think of positively. I am getting ready to deconstruct the entire movie. Let us start with the pacing. As I implied in my first paragraph, this film is paced way too quickly. After the logos pop up, the screen quickly switches to a blurry shot of… I have no idea what… and then words pop up “Vince Vaughn”. Then, they quickly disappear so that the words “Delivery Man” pop up, then it uses terribly unfocused shots to have the rest of the cast pop up very quickly and then the movie speeds off, taking less than five minutes to introduce Vince Vaughn’s character, OUR MAIN CHARACTER, so that we can get into some laughs. So, as a conflict rises in the first fifteen minutes of the movie, we see Vince Vaughn get a person’s file and seek them out with a five to fifteen minute small story line in which Vince Vaughn meets and attempts to connect with this person. After that is over, we go through the same side story, just with a different person, again… and then again… and then again. Therefore, the side stories get incredibly predictable and the film starts to lose momentum and starts to become uninteresting a failed to keep me interested and enjoyed. Then, it decided to make you think they are wrapping up this circle of repetition, when it just comes back around to continue repeating itself for another five (or so) minutes. Though, it then gets out of this torture for the audience, but continues to move at the speed of Vince Vaughn’s voice, while you start to realize that they just skipped months inside the film. The film needed a different director and editor.

            Another major flaw I had with the movie is the humor. This movie starts out alright, but it slowly loses momentum, interest, and ability to be enjoyed in an almost a steady line down. In the first ten to fifteen minutes, some of the laughs hit, some of them miss, and just a small number of them make you think “Was this supposed to be humorous?” Then, once the movie starts to dig its grave, it gets less and less funny. The laughs get cheesier and the script even repeats its laughs as it continues. That is a lazy screenplay right there. There are also times in which they try to have a joke, but the filmmakers feel that they need to constantly add on to a joke that was not funny in the first place to a joke that goes much farther than it needs to. That happened more than once. There was one scene near the middle-end in which there was a very funny laugh, but it was created by a lawyer being an idiot then not working well at all on his feet. If he is a lawyer, then the law school he went to must have been horrible. Then, after it picked up for a second, it gets back into its grave begins to bury itself. This movie was not very funny and since it is a comedy, the movie really does not achieve what it is almost made to attempt.

            I have, yet another, major flaw with this movie, which was the story and overall plot. The story was cheesy and unrealistic, so the writer/director/editor attempted to get over that by having two completely unnecessary side stories. One of the side stories was a huge cliché wrapped in a bow, but the other one was something that I have not seen before, and therefore, I was interested in it. But the director executed this poorly, because the side story I was interested in was barely in the movie at all. And in the real world, that would be the top priority and the top storyline of this person’s life. So when the film comes back to that storyline, all it did was make me think of how many flaws this scene and the whole side story together have. Then, the writers decide that they need to end this side story in the laziest way they could. With the other side story, it is shown much more than the other side story, but the movie takes somewhat long breaks before it gets back to this story, which illustrates how unrealistic and “card-board-cut-out” these characters are. With both side stories, it takes breaks before it gets back to them. It was a much larger flaw with the one I was interested in, because of the type of people the side story contains, but it was still a problem with the other one. Also, utilizing this other side story, (the one that was showed more than the one I was interested in) the writers tried to make the ending better, by melding the primary story with this story in a very lazy and unrealistic way. So, while these side stories both existed along with the primary story, it seemed somewhat convoluted. And, these side stories but ended in lazy and unrealistic ways. This movie does not have much realism to itself. Both side stories did not need to exist, and without them, the movie would be better.

            That was my last major flaw of the movie. Now, I will get to all of the flaws I had with the movie that were not major. First off, it was a very clichéd movie. There was several times in which someone would do something that was very clichéd. There would be a shot of someone getting into a car, but only on the driver’s side, so there would already be someone in the passenger’s seat that they somehow did not notice. And that shot very first popped on the screen, I knew what was going to happen in that scene. And this film is just like every other recent Vince Vaughn movie. Second off, it is a very, very predictable film. I knew from the beginning of the film what type of ending it was going to have. I would predict what was going to happen in a scene in several scenes. But, near the middle of the film, I thought I had it all figured out… and then, I find out that… I was absolutely correct about everything. Somewhat early on in the movie, I predicted several plot points of the film, and not all of them were correct, though. That was because of an event that happened near the middle-end of the film, which basically changed up the whole movie. I would have had to predict that event to predict how the film would turn out. I was correct about plot points not regarding that plot point, though. Third off, there were elements of the script that would not make sense. Near the middle of the movie, someone would get mad about something that someone else did. Then, at the end of the movie, the person that the other person got mad at would tell the person that was mad at them what they were mad at them for, and then the person who got mad acted completely like they just found out. That is like if in a movie, there were a mother and a son. Near the middle of the movie, the mother gets in a tirade about the son not taking out the trash. Then, at the end of the movie, the son tells the mother that he did not take out the trash and the mother is dumbfounded about this. For a movie to have that big of a plot inconsistency that is that obvious, the editor must have done half of his job, then just decided to keep the movie how it is. Lastly, the film was not very enjoyable. As I have said, this movie starts out alright, but then an almost straight line deceleration demonstrates how this film’s ability to be enjoyed decreased rapidly. The story becomes so familiar, and it becomes so repetitive and predictable and clichéd that is loses your interest and stops becoming enjoyable, or even entertaining, really.

            I will now mention aspects of this movie that made me not completely hate it. The production value is not bad. I am sure that they worked on this movie to make it look alright, because it did. And, this film never got to the point of which I am not interested in watching the rest of this film one bit. There were scenes in which I wanted the movie to end. There were scenes in which if they went on much longer, I would have fallen asleep. But that is a very small number of scenes, and the worst this film gets, enjoyment wise, is when it gets hard to enjoy and when it becomes not very enjoyable.

            Deliver Man had alright acting, some enjoyable moments, looked good, and was not terrible, but it had a very lazy script, a large amount of clichés, many predictable elements, repeated itself many times, was not very funny, had many bad jobs with editing, had many plot inconsistencies, had bad characters, was not very enjoyable overall, and had many flaws with the plot and stories of the movie. This is not a very good film. I actually cannot even recommend watching this movie at home. But if you are a fan of Vince Vaughn’s recent movies, then I can slightly recommend watching this on cable.

            On my rating system, I rate this movie “Don’t Watch This If You’re Looking for a Good Movie”.
            On the grading rating system, I give the film a C.
            On the out-of-10 system, I give Deliver Man a 4.7/10.