Jenna Walter
The film may be flawed, but its message is not.
Sabah Hensley
This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama
Billy Ollie
Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
SimonJack
"Delivering Milo" is a mild fantasy set between earth and a mythical place where young children are waiting their turn to be born. It's sort of an eternal kids' domain where children around seven years old wait until it's their turn to enter life. They then walk through a door into a bright light and the next scene is a mother delivering a baby. Milo is a boy who doesn't want to leave the comfort of the place he's in. He's nervous about the unexpected. He'd rather stay where he is. It's not nirvana or heaven. There seems to be no activity other than sitting around and waiting. There are no things known in life - eating, games, shows, working, etc. It's just being. You might say Milo has no ambition or interest in anything. The trouble is that he can stop the whole process of children being born by not going through the door. This is just one of a few kooky aspects about this fantasy about life, living and being born. Another one is the guy who's given another chance to reach a goal... probably heaven. He's in some other place that's not purgatory or hell, and he comes to take Milo in his current age to New York city to see what life is really like. Albert Finney plays Elmore Dahl, who has charge of Milo for this one day or two. Another part of the story is about Milo's mother and father, as they wait for his delivery. She's nervous and worries that her husband may leave her. Her dad had abandoned her mother and her after she was born. Putting two and two together, one might guess where this film goes from there. After one day in which no children were born anywhere in the world, Milo meets his mom and decides to take the step to be born. Before that he was turned off on life because of the environment that Elmore favored. Finney's character is distasteful, and doesn't seem to fit the story very well. Except for Bridget Fonda and Campbell Scott as Milo's parents, the characters and story seem listless. This is supposed to be a comedy fantasy, but it's a real stretch to find much humor. Here's a line that reflects the type and level of humor. Elmore Dahl, "Go ahead, you'll love it. There's no way anyone can teach you about the pleasure of eating. You gotta do it yourself."I enjoy truly inspirational and moving stories. But, for the life of me, I can't see what some other reviewers find is so uplifting in this film. Unless it's Milo's desire at the end to be born. And, that's just the natural inclination of all new life.
Armand
the idea is nice , Albert Finney does a decent work, Anton Yelchin is adorable, spiritual and touching, Bridget Fonda and Campbell Scott are not bad choices but that is not new discovery. the fundamental problem - something missing. short - the idea is too large for film. so, each effort seems be almost insignificant. and the good parts - no surprise because many of them are details. it is not a bad film and for children can be an interesting experience but the final taste is a mixture of honey and ash. obvious, the good intentions are the base of it and the ambition of team is not small but the cast, the story must have a better led. all seems be colored pieces from a stained glass sketch.
vchimpanzee
Elizabeth has a stressful job in the city, and she's about to give birth. Her husband Kevin appears to have some sort of blue-collar job, which is unusual, but he seems fine with his wife having a job that has more prestige and probably pays more than his.In another world (I didn't understand this and assumed we were seeing the child's future) Milo is misbehaving when he's supposed to be lining up in the room where all the new babies go. They all appear to be young children, and as each one exits, a hand appears out of a great white light. The children are excited and happy for Milo. But Milo is too frightened of this mystery place and runs away.Back in the "real world" Elizabeth appears to go into labor, but nothing happens and the doctor calls it Braxton-Hicks. Elizabeth and Kevin return home and find more stress, and eventually Elizabeth starts wanting more from life.Milo, on the other hand, has caused a crisis in his world. The officials are desperate for a solution. Babies must be born in order, and no babies can be born until Milo changes his mind. In the real world, the big news story is the lack of births anywhere.Someone must accompany Milo to the real world and show him it is not such a bad place. The perfect candidate, currently in limbo but content, needs to do good deeds to get into Heaven. That man is Elmore.No one is supposed to leave this wonderful place. "The" door is an entrance, not an exit. The waiting room looks like a nursing home except the people are well-dressed. The desk clerk can't believe anyone would leave, but an exception has been made. "He" wants Elmore to go. And so it happens--Elmore and Milo exit "the" door into the bustling New York City.Elmore is excited. This is the greatest city in the world! Milo is frightened and runs away. But it's not the only great city. When he was alive, Elmore loved to gamble, and Atlantic City is the paradise for gamblers. At least on the East Coast. And Anna is there to provide ... companionship.Elmore has 72 hours to change Milo's mind, OR ELSE. And it's not going to be easy. But once no more babies are born--ever--that's the end of the human race.Meanwhile, Elizabeth must solve her problems. One is the fact that her father abandoned her when she was young. And the description of her father sounds a lot like someone we know ...Albert Finney does an amazing job. He has so much enthusiasm. He is the perfect blue-collar New Yorker who isn't quite perfect but who is everyone's friend.Anton Yelchin does a good job too. Milo is just naughty enough and just appealing enough, but not overly sweet.I didn't care much for Bridget Fonda, but she is attractive.It was disappointing to me to see the woman I knew as Cinderella playing a bimbo. But she does a good enough job.This movie has important lessons to teach us about family and what is really important in life. And while it has a few bad words and acknowledges that some people don't wait until marriage, it is a family movie that older children can watch. At least I think so; I can't recall if it was edited.This movie delivers!
netwallah
Sometimes the number of possible plot variations seems almost unlimited, and sometimes the plot-hoard seems constrained and restricted to a finite number of basic stories and a set of permutations. When it comes to this movie, however, I'm not sure whether I believe in the big set or the little set. It's half-way between. In some ways the premise is familiar—there's a heaven, of sorts, where children hang out waiting for the appropriate time to be born. It's sort of like a big residential school, all the children wearing neat school uniforms, tended by young people in their late teens or early 20s, in a space that's half neo-classical and half office building and all suffused with golden light. One of the children is Milo (Anton Yelchin), a curly-headed kid adept at card tricks and telling fortunes. He likes it there—wherever "there" is—and so when "Mr. Gordon" pronounces him Ready To Go, he's reluctant. The kids sit calmly in a big room, scooting over in line as each of their friends walks through the Door into the bright light and takes the mother's hand and gets born. A nice, whimsical conceit, that manages to be matter-of-fact and sentimental at the same time. But Milo is apprehensive and refuses to go. This means the next kid can't get born, and the team in the golden-light place are worried. Meanwhile, in New York there's a couple waiting for their first child to be born, Elizabeth (Bridget Fonda) and Kevin (Campbell Scott). They're an interesting pair—he is quiet and handsome and involved in some sort of wildly successful artistic production that involves glass-blowing and a gigantic Manhattan warehouse-studio and a large jovial assistant, and he is kind and sympathetic most of the time and loves Elizabeth and even rides a motorcycle in his spare time. The problem is Elizabeth, who is successful at whatever she does, and is well-dressed and quite lovely, and happy with Kevin, but she has doubts and self-doubts stemming from the fact that her father walked out on her and her mother when she was little. She wants the baby, but she's afraid. And just at the time Milo is waiting in the Door chamber, she's going into labour, and then when he runs out, it stops. And so do all other births everywhere in the world. The attendants, in conference, get a telephone call from Upstairs—a little piece of business: the phones are the chunky old rotary ones, but there are no cords. Somebody is going to take Milo to the world for a day to induce him to agree to getting born. It turns out to be Elmore Dahl (Albert Finney), a crusty, jovial, card-playing, con artist, who wasn't bad enough to go Downstairs but certainly wasn't good enough to go Upstairs. He insists on a deal, that if he succeeds, he gets some more time alive, and "He" agrees. Elmore and Milo take an elevator down to an intake unit, sort of a hotel lobby, also illuminated by the golden light, and out they go onto the streets of New York. What follows is predictable: Elmore takes Milo to his favourite places, the Carnegie Deli, Central Park, the Statue of Liberty, and buys him ice cream and other good foods. Milo is amused, but then he's terrified by a Bosch painting in the Met, and even when they get to Atlantic City—Elmore has gotten himself attached to lush, laughing, eager divorcée Anna (Leslie Ann Warren)—Milo is reluctant. And he's disturbed to learn that Elmore abandoned his family, and he can't miss the signs of selfishness in Elmore's sometimes grotesque jollity. So everything is about to fail--everything--the Door will close, no more babies will ever be born. Elmore gives up and tries to go to bed with Anna. Milo wanders on the boardwalk and runs into a weeping Elizabeth, who's been reminded of her absent father, enjoyed a freakish run of good blackjack luck at home with a pack of Atlantic City cards, and then lost at the blackjack table. Milo is drawn to her and tries to cheer her up, using the same techniques Elmore used on him, and it works. Telling her fortune with a deck of cards, Milo realizes who she is—his mother—and has a change of heart, and at the same time so does Elmore. They almost don't make it back; Milo collapses outside the intake door as Elizabeth goes into labour again and Kevin shows up on his motorcycle to take care of her, and Elmore—his grandfather—has to choose to carry him back, thus ending his brief reincarnation. He grimaces as he does so, noting it's a case of the scammer scammed. Mr. Gordon says "He works in mysterious ways." Milo is born, and suddenly births happen again. Elmore is discharged—upstairs. In some ways the plot line is so predictable that one gets the feeling of déja vu, and yet it's done so cleverly, with a nice touch of dry humour in heaven, and with a gigantic performance by Finney, whose New York accent is pretty good, and who is both lovable and outrageous, and with solid performances by Fonda and Yelchin (the very gifted Campbell Scott is underused here)—with all this working in its favour, the movie is surprisingly good in spite of its potential shortcomings.
