Starbuck

David Wozniak (Patrick Huard) is a man without ambition, but with 80,000 dollars in debt. Then the 42-year-old meat delivery man from the local butcher's shop receives a message that turns his life upside down: David fathered 533 children with his sperm donations more than 20 years ago under the name “Starbuck” at the local sperm bank. 142 of them now want to meet him in a class action lawsuit. But David has enough on his plate right now: His pregnant girlfriend wants to raise their child alone in the future; after all, she doesn't need a second one with David. And the creditors are increasingly using violence to get their money. But instead of fleeing the scene, David takes flight. The 'slacker' with the agile sperm may be unreliable and chaotic. But he has his heart in the right place. David has to get to know these children, one by one, incognito of course. What does he find? An unsuccessful actor, a heroin addict in love trouble, a professional footballer, a street musician, but also a boy with multiple disabilities, to whom David can only give his presence. David's children are as different as their environment and their mothers' genes have shaped them. Each of them tries to support David in their own way as a “fatherly friend”, while with Valérie he is first hired as a father on trial... What sounds like a thigh-slapping joke develops into a charming, warm-hearted fable about a man who slowly begins to take his life into his own hands. And it is as touching as it is insanely successful: “Starbuck” has already spawned several successful remakes - which itself speaks for the fertility of this unusual film character and his humanistic message. “It takes, they say, a whole village to raise a child - in Starbuck this truism is turned around in an original way when a huge horde of young people persuade their father to finally grow up. [...] It's also a nice idea that most of them go through life with hardly less meandering than their dad and above all gain strength and determination through their community spirit. Again and again there are heartfelt moments, but it never becomes pathetic. Where lesser filmmakers would do their utmost to make the movie a tearjerker, such as when David visits a severely disabled boy, director Ken Scott remains emphatically sober and even dispenses with any use of music. The whole movie benefits from this kind of restraint at the right moment. Starbuck is a “feel-good movie”, no question about it. But when you leave the movie theater, you feel good, but not manipulated.” (Kai Mihm, on: www.epd-film.de)