Instant Family (2018)
Directed by Sean Anders
When Pete and Ellie decide to start a family, they stumble into the world of foster care adoption. They hope to take in one small child but when they meet three siblings, including a rebellious 15 year old girl, they find themselves speeding from zero to three kids overnight.
14 connections found
View:
14 films that influenced Instant Family
What critics say influenced Instant Family
The script, co-written by John Morris, is aware enough to have Wahlberg deliver a quip about James Cameron’s Avatar and the White Saviour Complex, and yet there are some loose ends and jagged edges around the appealing, if treacly central concept.
The film thinks it is attempting humour by pointing out the absurdity; complete with references to The Blind Side and Avatar .
And it takes a similarly head-on approach to the social concerns around adoption culture: for instance, the so-called “white savior” scenario that Wahlberg’s relative lunkhead Pete brings up via an “Avatar” movie reference.
When asked if they have any concerns about adopting children, Wahlberg’s character tries to explain his fear of being looked at as “white saviors” by describing the plot of the film Avatar .
And although the film acknowledges the white-savior cliché—which Wahlberg’s character goofily describes in terms of Avatar —it still subscribes to it, with rich suburban folks presented as the only hope these Hispanic kids have.
It’s a particularly dangerous landscape for non-white audiences, where movies like Avatar and The Blind Side have long laid the groundwork for an eye-rolling expectation of white savior films to unsettling results.
This big-hearted but surprisingly nuanced comedy drama about a white couple adopting three Latino siblings has been compared to Parenthood, the Steve Martin movie of 1989, and it certainly has a similar balance between schmaltz, silliness and disarming insight.
Clearly indebted to the more serious efforts of John Hughes or Ron Howard’s Parenthood than most modern day family comedies, Instant Family is one of the most pleasant surprises of not just the holiday season, but of the year in general.
“Instant Family” may be our era’s equivalent of a movie like Ron Howard’s “Parenthood” (1989), which came on as a comedy of parental angst ripped from experience but was, in fact, a tasteful sitcom.
But Sean Anders’ film, based on his own experiences of fostering children, is closer to something like Parenthood than a broad knockabout comedy with a cloying message tacked on.
The film thinks it is attempting humour by pointing out the absurdity; complete with references to The Blind Side and Avatar .
We get to follow the parental journeys of some of the others in the support group as well, the best of which is a straight-laced, no-sense-of-humor-having blond woman (comedian Iliza Shlesinger), who, though she vehemently denies it and is probably in denial about it herself, is looking to re-create the storyline from Sandra Bullock’s movie, 2009’s “The Blind Side.”
Here, they meet a cross section of hopeful couples looking to complete their own families: the Christian couple, the gay couple, the couple struggling to conceive and the single mom who aspires to turn a disenfranchised African-American child into an athletic phenom (jokes about Sandra Bullock in “The Blind Side” follow).
It’s so tragic, in fact, that’s often flippant in conflict and outcome, and from Annie to The Blind Side , it’s little more than a machine to wring out tears and self-righteousness.
Her whole bit about The Blind Side was freaking brilliant.
When asked what she hopes to gain from the adoption process, she describes the plot of the film The Blind Side .
Add in a few F-bombs and improvised comedy bits repeating obscure pop-culture references ad nauseam and Instant Family could easily find a home in the Apatow canon alongside Knocked Up and This Is 40.
Advertisement
Add in a few F-bombs and improvised comedy bits repeating obscure pop-culture references ad nauseam and Instant Family could easily find a home in the Apatow canon alongside Knocked Up and This Is 40.
And, yeah, there’s the entire conceit of Weird Science .
It’s as if “The Bad News Bears” had replaced every child-rearing book on the market as the instruction manual for how to talk to your children.
The kids come off more as Problem Child -style menaces than victims of circumstance, and their tragic back story remains vague enough to keep the movie’s tone light.
Advertisement
Sean Anders, the writer-director of Mark Wahlberg’s hit “Daddy’s Home” comedies, was inspired by his own experience adopting three foster children with his wife to create this warm-hearted look at a life-changing process for all involved.
There’s something about the ingredients of Instant Family that screams generic: Mark Wahlberg, the director of Daddy’s Home , family comedy with lessons to learn, will probably find its audience on Channel 5.
And it probably would have been a cheesy heartwarmer if the real events that inspired it hadn’t happened to Sean Anders, director and/or co-writer of films like Sex Drive , Hot Tub Time Machine , Horrible Bosses 2 , and Daddy’s Home .
Directed and co-written by Sean Anders ( Daddy’s Home ), and inspired by his and his wife’s own adoption story, Instant Family is the sort of heartwarming family movie that seems tailor-made for the holiday season – that time of year when we tend to find ourselves around a table with the people we love and who love us regardless of whether we’re tied by blood.
The uneven screenplay is inspired by the adoption experience of director Sean Anders ( Daddy’s Home ), whose three children come from the foster-care system.
Its director and co-writer, Sean Anders, has made a couple of movies I thought were reasonably funny (like the first Daddy’s Home ) and more I thought were not (like Horrible Bosses 2 ).
And it probably would have been a cheesy heartwarmer if the real events that inspired it hadn’t happened to Sean Anders, director and/or co-writer of films like Sex Drive , Hot Tub Time Machine , Horrible Bosses 2 , and Daddy’s Home .
Director and writer Sean Anders, whose comedic resume has some mild highs (see: Hot Tub Time Machine , Sex Drive ) and some devastating lows ( Dumb and Dumber To , Mr. Popper’s Penguins ), leans on his own personal experiences with adoption for a story that never quite achieves the heart it thinks it carries.
Poised indelicately between shameless schmaltz and slappy slapstick, Instant Family may be blunt and messy, but it’s easily a career best for the filmmaker behind Sex Drive and Horrible Bosses 2 .
Instant Family is the kind of movie one wouldn’t expect from the director of Sex Drive, That’s My Boy, and the Daddy’s Home movies.
The man behind such over-the-top comedic entertainments like Sex Drive , Horrible Bosses 2 and the two Daddy’s Home motion pictures tones things down considerably for this thought-provoking and warmhearted drama.
Anders is the successful screenwriter and director of such works as Horrible Bosses 2, Sex Drive and, most relevant to this discussion, the two Daddy’s Home movies, both of which starred Mark Wahlberg and featured extended families (some might call them non-traditional families, but blended families are becoming far too common for such a narrow label).