Packed dramedy hits sweet spot
Director/co-writer Sean Anders really takes the “instant” part of his new family dramedy “Instant Family” to heart. The film drops us right into the lives of Pete (Mark Wahlberg) and Ellie (Rose Byrne) with little fanfare, as if to say to the audience, “Catch up guys, we’ve got a lot of story to tell.”
It’s not too difficult to pick up what Anders is putting down, as Pete and Ellie are the kind of nice, upper-middle-class, fast-talking, attractive white couple who frequently populate this kind of film. They’re missing one thing: kids. They’ve never met a challenge they couldn’t tackle, so off to foster parenting class they go. They just don’t know how big of a challenge they’re in for.
Anders, who is known for the “Daddy’s Home” movies and other broad comedies, drew largely from his own experiences as an adoptive parent for the script, which he co-wrote with John Morris. He and his wife adopted a set of siblings, and that’s exactly what Pete and Ellie do after cautiously approaching a group of teenagers at an adoption fair. The sassy, defiant Lizzy (Isabela Moner) makes an impression, and it turns out she comes with two incredibly cute and incredibly difficult younger siblings, Juan (Gustavo Quiroz) and Lita (Julianna Gamiz).
Anders smartly punctures any representational issues in the tightly packed script. When Pete worries about looking like a “white savior” to kids of color, the sardonic social workers Karen (Octavia Spencer) and Sharon (Tig Notaro) sarcastically offer to write “whites only” on their file, much to the couple’s chagrin. And yet, it does end up being a white savior story in a way — the married, well-off white couple does end up being more equipped to handle raising three kids than their mother, Carla (Joselin Reyes), who struggles with addiction and incarceration and doesn’t feel ready to take on the kids, no matter how much Lizzy wants to be reunited with her.
Moner gives perhaps her fiercest and most complex performance yet, as a foster teen who is more adult than kid and has a harder time accepting a “new” mom and dad. She truly sells the sorrow and ache Lizzy feels for her own mother, while struggling to accept that she needs the support Pete and Ellie are offering to her and her siblings.
It’s not all heart-wrenching fights and impossible issues. “Instant Family” is also incredibly funny, deftly using humor to address any potential social issue blind spots. Speaking of blind, there’s a running gag about one of the other foster parents, a stern woman named October (Iliza Schlesinger), who unknowingly wants to enact her own version of “The Blind Side.” Anders stacks the supporting cast with scene-stealing character actresses like Margo Martindale and Joan Cusack, while Spencer and Notaro deserve a spinoff series for their smack-talking social worker duo.
While the pace of “Instant Family” can be relentless, with the supporting cast and a whole lot of authenticity, Anders hits that sweet spot of hilarious and heartwarming, where the sweetness and tears are well-deserved, and earned.