"“Despite the melodrama there is actually a rather poignant sentiment behind this story...”"

Ken Scott’s Canadian box office hit Starbuck tells the unimaginable story of a man who discovers he has 533 children as a result of donating sperm 20 years previously. In what is an innocuous comedy depiction of such events, Starbuck is a film that you could pick holes in all day, as a feature littered with issues – but it’s almost not worth it. It’s feel-good cinema, innit.

Patrick Huard plays David Wozniak, a forty-something, perpetual adolescent who works as a deliveryman for the family-run butcher shop. However his life is soon about to change when he discovers that his on-off partner Valérie (Julie LeBreton) is expecting his child. Little does David realise that such news will soon prove somewhat tangential, when he learns that he has 533 children as a result of his donations to a fertility clinic when he was younger.

142 of David’s offspring are filing a lawsuit to determine the identity of their father, who went under the alias ‘Starbuck’. David  – who also owes a vast amount of money to local gangsters – hires his best friend Avocat (Antoine Bertrand) to be his lawyer and tackle the huge, media-exposed case. Although when David starts visiting his children, taking on an almost guardian angel role in their lives, he must then decide how important his anonymity really is…

Starbuck begins strongly, with a series of laugh out loud moments, as Scott sets up his film well. However, despite the promising opening, sadly the feature loses its way somewhat, entering a terribly uncomfortable state of mawkishness as we reach the latter stages, losing ounces of credibility along the way. With a quite terrible last quarter of an hour, the shame is that it undoes much of the good work that lay before it, as Scott seems infuriatingly intent on tying up all loose ends.

Starbuck does have a really witty script however, and the story is fascinating – you never once feel bored with this feature. However, given the over-sentimentality of the picture, and Scott’s inclination to take too much of a contrived, predictable cinematic approach, it turns what is a potentially dark comedy, into a quite fluffy, harmless one, which is disappointing. You only need to look at selection of David’s kids who he picks out at random to go and visit – ticking off all the boxes needed to market a successful United Colours of Benetton campaign. It’s just too predictable.

Nonetheless, given the magnitude of the story – and Huard’s impressive performance, Starbuck avoids becoming too bad a film, and despite the melodrama there is actually a rather poignant sentiment behind this story, of a man who takes a reality check and matures somewhat, as a late-blooming coming of age tale. Of course with a strong story like this, one certainly expects a Hollywood remake is on the cards. Oh wait, it already is. Lemme guess, Vince Vaughn? Oh, that too.