Chronic underachiever David (Vaughn) can barely keep his life together: he`s hugely in debt, he constantly disappoints his family, and his on-off girlfriend Emma (Smulders) has decided that he`s not fit to be the father of their unborn child. Life only gets more complicated when he discovers that – thanks to his earlier incarnation as prolific sperm donor Starbuck – he`s the biological father of 533 children, 142 of whom are trying to find out who he is by contesting the confidential agreements he signed with the fertility clinic many years ago.
Writer-director Ken Scott`s film – a remake of his own Canadian film-festival hit Starbuck – has a lot going for it: David is written and played as an appealingly hopeless, oddly sweet failure of a man, one who tries so hard, with such good intentions, that you want to forgive him the worst of his many transgressions. This characteristic is precisely why the first half of the film works so well. David`s tentative attempts to find out more about his offspring yield moments both funny and emotional, whether he`s trying to help out one son by taking a disastrous shift as a barista, or struggling to find the right things to say to a bedridden young man (SÃ