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Instant Family
Despite a somewhat hackneyed plot, the 2018 comedy Instant Family provides pretty consistent laughs and a fair amount of surprises for what appeared to be a standard story on the surface.
Pete and Ellie Wagner (Mark Wahlberg, Rose Byrne) are a couple who are trying to fill the void in their lives by renovating and flipping houses. After some serious soul searching, they find themselves enrolled in a foster parenting class and eventually meet a hardened young teenage named Lizzy. Partly fueled by their guilt about the fact that prospective parents don't want to adopt teenagers, Pete and Ellie agree to meet Lizzy but are thrown when they learn she has a brother named Juan and a sister Lita and that they are a package deal. Juan is a klutz who apologizes a lot and Lita doesn't eat anything but potato chips.
This latest offering from director and co-screenwriter Sean Anders, the man behind the two Daddy's Home movies, deserves credit for opening my eyes to a couple of things I didn't know about the foster care system. I found it a little unsettling that the foster care people actually throw outdoor "fairs" where prospective parents can actually come and "shop" for possible children to adopt. I was also very disturbed by a term I had never heard before called "aging out" which refers to children who are not adopted by the time they're 18 and if this is true, I am disgusted by this.
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Anders actually provides a pretty balanced look at all sides of this story, which is maybe why the movie is a little longer than it really needs to be. I found a scene right after Pete and Ellie take the kids in and are reunited with other prospective parents who were in the class with them who seemed to be waiting for Pete and Ellie to fail a little unsettling. Of course, the expected scene where the kids' birth mom returns and wants her kids back was fraught with a tension that made it one of the best scenes in the film. Anders paints a pretty realistic picture of foster parenting here that turns out be a lot richer than an extended episode of The Brady Bunch.
Anders seems to enjoy working with Wahlberg and gets a nicely modulated performance from him here and even Byrne is less annoying than usual. I also enjoyed Octavia Spencer and Tig Notaro as the parenting class teachers, Julie Hagerty and Michael O'Keefe as Ellie's parents, and the fabulous Margo Martindale as Pete's mother. There's also a cute cameo at the film's climax by Joan Cusack that deserves mention. It's slightly overlong, but there are enough surprises offered along the way to sustain viewer interest.
Despite a somewhat hackneyed plot, the 2018 comedy Instant Family provides pretty consistent laughs and a fair amount of surprises for what appeared to be a standard story on the surface.
Pete and Ellie Wagner (Mark Wahlberg, Rose Byrne) are a couple who are trying to fill the void in their lives by renovating and flipping houses. After some serious soul searching, they find themselves enrolled in a foster parenting class and eventually meet a hardened young teenage named Lizzy. Partly fueled by their guilt about the fact that prospective parents don't want to adopt teenagers, Pete and Ellie agree to meet Lizzy but are thrown when they learn she has a brother named Juan and a sister Lita and that they are a package deal. Juan is a klutz who apologizes a lot and Lita doesn't eat anything but potato chips.
This latest offering from director and co-screenwriter Sean Anders, the man behind the two Daddy's Home movies, deserves credit for opening my eyes to a couple of things I didn't know about the foster care system. I found it a little unsettling that the foster care people actually throw outdoor "fairs" where prospective parents can actually come and "shop" for possible children to adopt. I was also very disturbed by a term I had never heard before called "aging out" which refers to children who are not adopted by the time they're 18 and if this is true, I am disgusted by this.
Anders actually provides a pretty balanced look at all sides of this story, which is maybe why the movie is a little longer than it really needs to be. I found a scene right after Pete and Ellie take the kids in and are reunited with other prospective parents who were in the class with them who seemed to be waiting for Pete and Ellie to fail a little unsettling. Of course, the expected scene where the kids' birth mom returns and wants her kids back was fraught with a tension that made it one of the best scenes in the film. Anders paints a pretty realistic picture of foster parenting here that turns out be a lot richer than an extended episode of The Brady Bunch.
Anders seems to enjoy working with Wahlberg and gets a nicely modulated performance from him here and even Byrne is less annoying than usual. I also enjoyed Octavia Spencer and Tig Notaro as the parenting class teachers, Julie Hagerty and Michael O'Keefe as Ellie's parents, and the fabulous Margo Martindale as Pete's mother. There's also a cute cameo at the film's climax by Joan Cusack that deserves mention. It's slightly overlong, but there are enough surprises offered along the way to sustain viewer interest.