The Polka King

The Polka King (2017) is an American comedy you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Maya Forbes. Jack Black plays Jan Lewan, a real-life Polish immigrant who became Pennsylvania's most beloved polka bandleader — and then built a Ponzi scheme out of his own fan base, promising elderly admirers returns of twelve percent on their savings.

Jan isn't written as a crook. He genuinely believes in himself, in his music, in the American promise that hard work pays off eventually. Jenny Slate plays his wife, Jason Schwartzman his manager, and Jackie Weaver his sharp-eyed mother-in-law, all orbiting a man whose optimism keeps outrunning his cash flow. The comedy comes from watching a very real disaster assemble itself one cheerful bad decision at a time.

Lewan was eventually convicted and sentenced — the case became one of the stranger financial fraud stories in polka history, which is a sentence that exists. Black plays him with enough warmth that the whole thing lands somewhere between funny and genuinely sad. Stream The Polka King (2017) online on iFILM.