Starbuck

Starbuck (2011) is a French-Canadian comedy by Ken Scott, and you can watch it online on iFILM. David Wozniak is a forty-something screw-up drowning in debt when a lawyer drops a bombshell: the sperm he once donated for cash produced exactly 533 kids.

More than a hundred of those grown children have filed suit to make the fertility clinic unmask the donor they only know as "Starbuck" — David's old alias. Meanwhile his girlfriend Valérie tells him she's pregnant and isn't sure he's father material. So David starts quietly tracking down his offspring, helping one land a job, pulling another out of trouble, simply showing up for a third. Patrick Huard carries the lead, with Antoine Bertrand as his frazzled lawyer pal.

The film cleaned up audience awards on the festival circuit and worked well enough that Scott himself remade it in Hollywood two years later with Vince Vaughn. What sells it isn't the high-concept gimmick but how warmly it handles growing up well past forty, never tipping into a lecture. Stream Starbuck (2011) online on iFILM.