Delivery Man (***)

A lot of Hollywood remakes of non-American films change things for the worse; this remake of a Canadian film called Starbuck, which was released stateside just a few months earlier, changes the title, the actors, and the setting (Montreal to Brooklyn), but not much else, not even the writer-director. I do wonder whether it was boring for Ken Scott to remake his own movie. Virtually every scene is the same as in the original.

Once again, the story follows a happy-go-lucky meat delivery man (Vince Vaughn) whose easy-spending ways are about to catch up with him. At the same time, so are some of the 533 children, now young adults, that he fathered via sperm donations with the code name Starbuck. They’re threatening to sue to learn his identity even as his girlfriend (Cobie Smulders), having conceived with him the natural way, wants him to be just a sperm donor; she’d rather raise the child alone.

Clearly, some life changes are in order. Starbuck, aka David, doesn’t want to become an instant father to hundreds, yet can’t resist seeing what his progeny are up to. (His employment in the family business and previous allowances for incompetency allows him plenty of free time.) As in the Canadian version, this makes for a sometimes humorous, sometimes tender story. Compared to Patrick Huard’s version of Starbuck, Vaughn is a bit less scruffy, but the role of a genial screw-up suits him. (So, apparently, do scene-for-scene remakes: he played Norman Bates in the 1998 Psycho.) The lawyer/best friend character is played by Chris Pratt, who once again urges Starbuck to use an insanity defense when he’s committed no crime. Even the baffling plot points are recycled, but if you didn’t see the original version this one will be just as good, just as this partly recycled review should be just as good as my Starbuck review, if you haven’t read that.

IMDb link

viewed 11/19/13 and posted 11/19/13