Ever wonder what it’s like to have more than 500 biological offspring out there? How about a mere 142 kids chasing you down with a wish to out your identity?
Welcome to probably the first sperm-donor comedy. It won’t be the last since the inevitable American- remake knockoff with Vince Vaughan gets released later this year. If it shares the fate of most American remakes, you’d do well to see this film while you can.
David Wozniak’s a modest delivery guy for a French Canadian (by way of Polish) family butcher shop. He gets hit with a ton of bricks when a lawyer for a class action suit shows up in his apartment. Seems all the sperm-donating Wozniak let loose a couple of decades back has now come to a head. While it’s strictly deus ex machina that all these disparate souls miraculously organized off-camera to find common ground, Starbucks camouflages much of its weak plausibility in a cloak of biting humor and humane sentiment. Patrick Huard charms and mugs his way to a fine performance, and the utter strangeness of this film wears itself well. The lawyer with the bad news is another in a succession of strangers who manage to gain entry to Wozniak’s apartment to threaten him. The first batch were unhappy creditors who sort of semi-waterboard him into a royal fright. We never learn why he owes them $80,000 but his plight lingers through the film like a low-hanging plot facilitator.
So Wozniak then decides to pull a Guardian Angel-act on all these young souls seeking out their sperm dad. A folder emerges containing their photos and profiles. Shy to identify the nature of his interest in their well-being, he does a solid for each of the plaintiffs he manages to track down. A couple of his deeds border on heroic.
Antoine Bertrand provides a perfect foil to Huard as his friend/attorney who admits as much to pretending to be a lawyer as to actually being one. He also thinks Wozniak is totally bats. The comedy stays on the rails for the most part due to a wily screenplay (director Ken Scott co-wrote) and sharp comedic timing by Huard and Bertrand. The counterpoint pathos doesn’t make out quite as well, yet we’re largely spared from schmaltz overload. Wozniak has a girlfriend, Valerie (Julie LeBreton), from whom he conceals the truth while simultaneously trying to make amends for his reputation as unreliable. This at a time when his own fatherhood ironically looms. Valerie’s winsome and clever enough to counter his guile with a spunk of her own.
The crafty, often very funny Starbuck ultimately forces the viewer to identify with Wozniak and accept the inevitable outcome that his heart is in the right place enough to avoid the film from turning dark….Although that would have been an equally compelling movie for sure. Just imagine the first sperm-donor horror film. The mind boggles.