Instant Family (2018)

Directed by: Sean Anders | 118 minutes | comedy, drama | Actors: Mark Wahlberg, Rose Byrne, Isabela Moner, Gustavo Quiroz, Julianna Gamiz, Octavia Spencer, Tig Notaro, Tom Segura, Allyn Rachel, Britt Rentschler, Jody Thompson, Margo Martindale, Julie Hagerty, Michael O’Keefe, Joan Cusack

‘Instant Family’, a film about a couple who adopts three foster children, is based on the experiences of director Sean Anders (‘Sex Drive’, ‘Horrible Bosses 2’, ‘Daddy’s Home’) who has foster children of his own. The idea came about when co-writer John Morris suggested to Sean Anders that his foster parenting would be a good movie subject. The more they talked about it, the more they saw its potential and the more the idea took shape. The result is a film in which the challenging, beautiful and often frustrating trajectory of foster parenthood is presented in a humorous way.

Pete (Mark Wahlberg) and Ellie (Rose Byrne) are doing well renovating and selling houses. When Ellie’s sister Kim (Allyn Rachel) and husband Russ (Tom Segura) tour a house, they start talking about children. The conversation quickly becomes awkward when silent children’s wishes are questioned. Pete then makes a joke about foster kids that strikes a chord with Ellie. It doesn’t take Ellie much to convince Pete to try foster parenting and not long after, they enroll in an eight-week course for potential foster parents. When they finally meet the pool of children, their eye, or rather ear, falls on an empowered teenager Lizzy (Isabela Moner). Impressed by her fire and energy, they decide to adopt Lizzy as a foster child. However, when talking to social workers, Karen (Octavia Spencer) and Sharon (Tig Notaro), Pete and Ellie learn that Lizzy has a brother Juan (Gustavo Quiroz) and sister Lita (Julianna Gamiz). And they have to go with her. After some hesitation, they give it a try and a challenging, frustrating, moving and heartwarming journey begins by a group of people who don’t start as a family but do everything they can to be one.

‘Instant Family’ covers a number of interesting and heavy topics, including children who for one reason or another no longer live at home and end up in the system. It is an emotionally heavy, almost traumatic event for children, in which they are confronted with a world they are excluded from and have to make do with people who want to feel good through foster parenting. At least, that’s how children can experience it. As a result, they erect emotional walls so that they feel protected from disappointments and shattered dreams. Also for the foster parents, who hope to make a difference in the lives of these children, it is a very challenging journey when they have to see and love total strangers, overnight, as their own children. It is therefore an art to package these themes in a film in such a way that people get a warm feeling and inspire them to act equally great towards those who have not been so fortunate.

And it worked out very well. Sensitive and heavy moments are interrupted with perfectly timed humor that causes tears to flow from two different sources. And this would never have been possible without both the cast and the supporting cast who have created the film as a symphony.

Octavia Spencer and Tig Notaro play strong roles as social workers, guiding the foster parents through the process. On the one hand we have the empowered Karen who says it like it is and on the other Sharon who is more strategic in her statements. More often, this creates a hilarious back-and-forth bickering that, oddly enough, brings clarity to the often-doubting parents and wins them over. Joan Cusack and the well-known comedienne Iliza Shlesinger also provide moments that break the ice at the right moments and let you calmly release your held breath.

And, of course, it’s a joy to watch Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne as foster parents thrown in at the deep end and going screaming mad at strange creatures who clutter up the house, yell, ignore and are downright brash. The children, especially Isabela Moner and Julianna Gamiz, act as if it were their second nature. This can be concluded on the basis of the murderous tendencies that come up in you, as a viewer, and you want to bury them with pleasure under a cement floor.

Ultimately, ‘Instant Family’ is a sugary feel-good film that turns a fairly standard plot with heavy themes into a very enjoyable whole. It’s a must-see movie, purely because you know that the 118 minutes of your life have not been wasted. Open the internet and reserve a spot at the nearest cinema. Enjoy!