Ken Scott’s Delivery Man allows its star Vince Vaughn to take on a more dramatic role that downplays his witty and sardonic sense of humor and pours on the pathos. The results aren’t too impressive and the screenplay gives Vaughn some scattershot and often mediocre material to work with.

A remake of Scott’s own 2011 Canadian feature Starbuck, David (Vaughn) is an aimless meat truck driver with financial woes who finds out he’s expecting his first child with his girlfriend, played by an underutilized Cobie Smulders. Well… about that “first” child…

It turns out our title character donated to a sperm clinic on a very regular basis in the early 90s under the alias Starbuck. And his efforts produced an astonishing 533 children, many of whom file a lawsuit to find out who their daddy is. David is torn with this revelation and it leads him to seek out his spawn while attempting to maintain his true identity from them. He develops relationships with them and their characters often check off the movie cliché boxes. The drug addicted girl trying to go straight. The struggling actor. The musician. Then there’s Viggo the vegetarian (Adam Chanler-Berat), who learns who David truly is and hangs around for a few scenes to annoy his dad, as well as the audience. And there’s also the handicapped son, creating a subplot that feels a tad too manipulative for comfort.

A puffy, pre-Star-Lord Chris Pratt is afforded some good moments as David’s in over his head attorney friend who represents him in a counter suit to secure his anonymity. In many ways, Man rises and falls with Vaughn. There are scarce comedic moments and Vaughn greatly downplays the quick paced and irony drenched persona we’ve come to anticipate from him. At times, he seems to be trying a little too hard to play against type and his performance comes off a bit listless.

Delivery Man doesn’t succeed enough in exploring David’s newfound connection to these strangers who he happens to father and the script tries too hard to pull our heartstrings. As the hundreds of Starbuck kids want to establish their connection with him, my connection to the proceedings as a viewer was much like Vaughn’s performance – too muted.

** (out of four)