I watched this movie last week late night on some random network, the reason being that I was intrigued by the fact that both Paul Rudd and Reese Witherspoon (two great actors) were in the movie and yet I have never heard of it. From the beginning, my suspicions were that the movie would be awful, and sadly, those were confirmed within the first 20 minutes. The myriad of problems in this movie, the ridiculous plot, unrealistic dialog, incomprehensible development/dismissal of characters (e.g. Wyatt's friends), and sub-par acting have reserved a special place for this movie in Video Hell.
I'll start with the plot, the premise of which was promising, but ultimately better conceived in Road Trip (not the greatest movie itself but still somewhat entertaining). Look, I'll buy into suspension of disbelief, but to expect me to believe the whole scenario where Wyatt and Ivy decide to send the photos/condom to his girlfriend borders on insulting.
In the same vein, the dialog sounds like it was written by someone who has never been a college-aged kid, and as a stripper, Ivy's dialog was written very poorly as well.
Concerning character development, both Wyatt's friends and Christine Taylor's part were severely under-developed. For instance, Wyatt's friends appear to be a major part of the movie for the first 20 minutes, only to be unceremoniously dropped for the remainder of the film.
Furthermore, the movie inexplicably bills Christine Taylor as being a main character, yet she is only on screen a grand total of 20 minutes as well. I can only attribute these problems to poor editing, confirmed by the fact that the movie was originally supposed to be 30 minutes.
Finally, I get the feeling that pretty much every big name actor in the movie phoned it in to an extent. Paul Rudd spent the majority of the movie trying his hardest to be John Cusack on crack, which is annoying for the first half of the movie, infuriating for the latter half. This from a guy who has been a scene stealer in pretty much every other movie he's been in. Reese Witherspoon spends most of the movie with an "I need to fire my agent for getting me into this" look, and most of the other characters fail to bring laughs, although granted, they didn't have much to work with in the first place.
The bottom line is that "Overnight Delivery" is not a campy-yet-funny movie along the lines of "Heavyweights" (which has the same IMDb rating ), it's a poorly written piece of drivel which should be used as an example for How-Not-to-Make-a-Movie. If nothing else, I left the movie having a newfound respect for the high-profile names that survived this travesty and went on to bigger and better things.
I'll start with the plot, the premise of which was promising, but ultimately better conceived in Road Trip (not the greatest movie itself but still somewhat entertaining). Look, I'll buy into suspension of disbelief, but to expect me to believe the whole scenario where Wyatt and Ivy decide to send the photos/condom to his girlfriend borders on insulting.
In the same vein, the dialog sounds like it was written by someone who has never been a college-aged kid, and as a stripper, Ivy's dialog was written very poorly as well.
Concerning character development, both Wyatt's friends and Christine Taylor's part were severely under-developed. For instance, Wyatt's friends appear to be a major part of the movie for the first 20 minutes, only to be unceremoniously dropped for the remainder of the film.
Furthermore, the movie inexplicably bills Christine Taylor as being a main character, yet she is only on screen a grand total of 20 minutes as well. I can only attribute these problems to poor editing, confirmed by the fact that the movie was originally supposed to be 30 minutes.
Finally, I get the feeling that pretty much every big name actor in the movie phoned it in to an extent. Paul Rudd spent the majority of the movie trying his hardest to be John Cusack on crack, which is annoying for the first half of the movie, infuriating for the latter half. This from a guy who has been a scene stealer in pretty much every other movie he's been in. Reese Witherspoon spends most of the movie with an "I need to fire my agent for getting me into this" look, and most of the other characters fail to bring laughs, although granted, they didn't have much to work with in the first place.
The bottom line is that "Overnight Delivery" is not a campy-yet-funny movie along the lines of "Heavyweights" (which has the same IMDb rating ), it's a poorly written piece of drivel which should be used as an example for How-Not-to-Make-a-Movie. If nothing else, I left the movie having a newfound respect for the high-profile names that survived this travesty and went on to bigger and better things.