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Emma @ The Movies (1786 KP) rated Instant Family (2019) in Movies
Jun 22, 2019 (Updated Sep 25, 2019)
Going in to Instant Family I had some reservations. I'm a big fan of Rose Byrne, her performance in last year's Juliet, Naked was a delight to watch, but on the flipside Mark Wahlberg and comedy don't come high on my must see list. Thankfully those thoughts were quickly dismissed as the times I laughed out loud soared into the double digits.
This is a genuinely good film with just a couple of things that made me pause a little, I'll mention those later. The moments where I laughed it was out loud, like almost everyone else at the screening, and when I wasn't laughing I was probably crying, sometimes ugly crying.
Byrne and Wahlberg worked so well together and with Isabela Moner in the mix too we were treated to some great on screen chemistry. I'm hoping we'll see a lot more of Moner on our screens as she was able to pull her weight really well with all the fantastic actors in this.
A lot is obviously focused around Ellie, Pete and the kids, but outside of that dynamic I've got to give some love to Karen and Sharon. Octavia Spencer and Tig Notaro are such a fun double act, although for me Spencer will always steal the show. Their dynamic running the fostering program brought a smile to my face and while the reactionary humour may be predictable it lands so well that I couldn't care less that I knew it was coming.
My negatives about the films are so minute that they hardly seem worth mentioning. Pete (Wahlberg) has a tendency to be blunt and externalise what most of us would keep as inner dialogue. His script gives you those moments where you take a sharp breath and say "you shouldn't say that!" Ellie counteracts this by being the slight voice of reason so while you're taken aback by Pete's honesty you quickly come back to the normal flow of the film.
Out of my two quibbles this one caused me the most issues. Joan Cusack. She's great, I enjoy her work, but I really don't understand her inclusion in this. She pops up as a sort of cameo role near the end and it feels a little invasive on the dramatic moment we're witnessing, it just seems awkward and forced. It does at least lead to an amusing moment for Spencer so I think that probably gets it the pass.
Instant Family is definitely chock full of laughs and feels, despite my grumbles I still feel it deserves these five stars.
What you should do
It's a very entertaining film and perhaps surprisingly based on a true story, it's well worth a watch. I really think that everyone will get some entertainment out of this.
Movie thing you wish you could take home
If you could send Pete and Ellie round with their renovation skills it would be much appreciated.
This is a genuinely good film with just a couple of things that made me pause a little, I'll mention those later. The moments where I laughed it was out loud, like almost everyone else at the screening, and when I wasn't laughing I was probably crying, sometimes ugly crying.
Byrne and Wahlberg worked so well together and with Isabela Moner in the mix too we were treated to some great on screen chemistry. I'm hoping we'll see a lot more of Moner on our screens as she was able to pull her weight really well with all the fantastic actors in this.
A lot is obviously focused around Ellie, Pete and the kids, but outside of that dynamic I've got to give some love to Karen and Sharon. Octavia Spencer and Tig Notaro are such a fun double act, although for me Spencer will always steal the show. Their dynamic running the fostering program brought a smile to my face and while the reactionary humour may be predictable it lands so well that I couldn't care less that I knew it was coming.
My negatives about the films are so minute that they hardly seem worth mentioning. Pete (Wahlberg) has a tendency to be blunt and externalise what most of us would keep as inner dialogue. His script gives you those moments where you take a sharp breath and say "you shouldn't say that!" Ellie counteracts this by being the slight voice of reason so while you're taken aback by Pete's honesty you quickly come back to the normal flow of the film.
Out of my two quibbles this one caused me the most issues. Joan Cusack. She's great, I enjoy her work, but I really don't understand her inclusion in this. She pops up as a sort of cameo role near the end and it feels a little invasive on the dramatic moment we're witnessing, it just seems awkward and forced. It does at least lead to an amusing moment for Spencer so I think that probably gets it the pass.
Instant Family is definitely chock full of laughs and feels, despite my grumbles I still feel it deserves these five stars.
What you should do
It's a very entertaining film and perhaps surprisingly based on a true story, it's well worth a watch. I really think that everyone will get some entertainment out of this.
Movie thing you wish you could take home
If you could send Pete and Ellie round with their renovation skills it would be much appreciated.
Bob Mann (459 KP) rated Instant Family (2019) in Movies
Sep 28, 2021
Enjoyable and harmless comedy laced with a degree of sentimentality.
The Plot
Pete (Mark Wahlberg) and Ellie (Rose Byrne) are focused and business-oriented home designers. They’ve talked about having kids “sometime in the future” but the years – as years are want to do – are motoring away from them. Pete is concerned that if they have their own kids now then he will end up being an “old dad” (cue very funny, black-comedy, flashback). This leads them into contact with the State’s fostering service – led by Karen (Octavia Spencer) and Sharon (Tig Notaro) – and they progress into foster training. This introduces into their ‘perfect adult lives’ 15-year old Lizzy (Isabela Moner) and her younger siblings Juan (Gustavo Quiroz) and Lita (Julianna Gamiz). As these guys come from a troubled background Pete and Ellie find they have their work cut out. Who will crack first?
The turns
You’ve got to admire Mark Wahlberg as an actor. In the same vein as Steve Carell, he seems to be able to flex from dramatic (in his case, tough-guy action roles) to comedy without a blink. He’s nowhere near the calibre of actor as Carell, but he brings to all his roles a sense of menace – derived no doubt from his torrid criminal background in younger days. (His wiki page makes your eyes water: there’s a great biopic screenplay waiting to be written there! ) It must have made the kid actor who plays Charlie (Carson Holmes) actually soil himself at a key point in the film!
Wahlberg and the excellent Rose Byrne make a believable driven-couple, and Byrne has such a range of expressive faces that she can’t help but make you laugh.
Of the child actors, Nickelodeon star Isabella Moner shines with genuine brilliance, both in terms of her acting as the fiercely loyal Lizzy but also in terms of her musical ability (she sings the impressive end-title song). With Hollywood in ‘post-La-La-Showman: Here we go again’ mode, this is a talented young lady I predict might be in big demand over the next few years.
Top of my list of the most stupid “where the hell have I seen her before bang-my-head-against-the-cinema-wall” moments is the actress playing Ellie’s mother Jan. She is OF COURSE Julie Hagerty, air-hostess supreme from “Airplane!”.
Also good value, and topping my list of “I know her from lots of films but don’t know her name” is Margo Martindale* as Pete’s exuberant and easily bought mother Sandy. (*Must write this out 100 times before her picture appears in the Picturehouse Harbour Lights film quiz!).
A well-crafty script with some wayward characters
The script by director Sean (“Daddy’s Home”) Anders and John Morris zips along at a fine pace, albeit in a wholly predictable direction. It helps that I struggle the think of many films about the adoption process itself. Sure there have been lots of movies about children that have been adopted – Manchester By The Sea and Lion being two recent examples – but the only film I can immediately think of (and not in a good way) with foster care at its heart was the Katherine Heigl comedy from a few years ago “Life as we know it”. So this is good movie territory to mine.
There are some fine running jokes, notably young Juan’s penchant for constantly getting injured. However, the script also lapses as did Anders’ “Daddy’s Home 2” from last year – into moments of slushy sentimentality. (My dear departed Dad always used to affect an exaggerated snore at such points, and I could hear him in my head at regular intervals during the film!). I would have preferred a harder and blacker edge to the comedy: something that last year’s excellent “Game Night” pulled off so well.
There are also a couple of characters in the film that were poorly scripted and which just didn’t work. While Octavia Spencer was fine (channelling an almost identical version of her wisecracking and sardonic character from “The Shape of Water“), I just had no idea what her colleague Sharon (Tig Notaro) was supposed to be. The tone was all over the place. Similarly, who should pop up on a balcony in an unexpected cameo but the great Joan Cusack. And very funny she is too for the 10 second interruption. But the writers having got her there just couldn’t leave alone and we get a plain embarrassing extended interruption that strikes a duff note in the flow of the film.
Summary
The film is amusing and harmless without taxing many brain cells. Most notably unlike many so-called American ‘comedies’ it did actually make me laugh at multiple points. I should also point out that my wife absolutely loved it, rating it a strong 4* going on 5*.
But the really cute thing is that…
…the film is “inspired by a true family”: namely Anders’ own. He and his wife fostered three kids out of the US foster service, so the script is undoubtedly loosely based on their own experiences, which give it an extra impact for some of Peter and Ellie’s lines. In an essay for TIME (source: bustle.com) Anders wrote:
My wife Beth and I had been talking for years about whether we should have kids,” he wrote. “For the longest time we just felt like we couldn’t afford it. Then I sold a couple of scripts and was feeling like I might have a career, but we were in our 40s and worried we had left it too long. We knew kids would make our life bigger, so one day I joked, ‘Why don’t we just adopt a five-year-old and it will be like we got started five years ago?'”
It gives you a completely different perspective on the film knowing this. My wife after the film was saying “I’m not sure how accurately it portrays the fostering process”. But it clearly does.
Pete (Mark Wahlberg) and Ellie (Rose Byrne) are focused and business-oriented home designers. They’ve talked about having kids “sometime in the future” but the years – as years are want to do – are motoring away from them. Pete is concerned that if they have their own kids now then he will end up being an “old dad” (cue very funny, black-comedy, flashback). This leads them into contact with the State’s fostering service – led by Karen (Octavia Spencer) and Sharon (Tig Notaro) – and they progress into foster training. This introduces into their ‘perfect adult lives’ 15-year old Lizzy (Isabela Moner) and her younger siblings Juan (Gustavo Quiroz) and Lita (Julianna Gamiz). As these guys come from a troubled background Pete and Ellie find they have their work cut out. Who will crack first?
The turns
You’ve got to admire Mark Wahlberg as an actor. In the same vein as Steve Carell, he seems to be able to flex from dramatic (in his case, tough-guy action roles) to comedy without a blink. He’s nowhere near the calibre of actor as Carell, but he brings to all his roles a sense of menace – derived no doubt from his torrid criminal background in younger days. (His wiki page makes your eyes water: there’s a great biopic screenplay waiting to be written there! ) It must have made the kid actor who plays Charlie (Carson Holmes) actually soil himself at a key point in the film!
Wahlberg and the excellent Rose Byrne make a believable driven-couple, and Byrne has such a range of expressive faces that she can’t help but make you laugh.
Of the child actors, Nickelodeon star Isabella Moner shines with genuine brilliance, both in terms of her acting as the fiercely loyal Lizzy but also in terms of her musical ability (she sings the impressive end-title song). With Hollywood in ‘post-La-La-Showman: Here we go again’ mode, this is a talented young lady I predict might be in big demand over the next few years.
Top of my list of the most stupid “where the hell have I seen her before bang-my-head-against-the-cinema-wall” moments is the actress playing Ellie’s mother Jan. She is OF COURSE Julie Hagerty, air-hostess supreme from “Airplane!”.
Also good value, and topping my list of “I know her from lots of films but don’t know her name” is Margo Martindale* as Pete’s exuberant and easily bought mother Sandy. (*Must write this out 100 times before her picture appears in the Picturehouse Harbour Lights film quiz!).
A well-crafty script with some wayward characters
The script by director Sean (“Daddy’s Home”) Anders and John Morris zips along at a fine pace, albeit in a wholly predictable direction. It helps that I struggle the think of many films about the adoption process itself. Sure there have been lots of movies about children that have been adopted – Manchester By The Sea and Lion being two recent examples – but the only film I can immediately think of (and not in a good way) with foster care at its heart was the Katherine Heigl comedy from a few years ago “Life as we know it”. So this is good movie territory to mine.
There are some fine running jokes, notably young Juan’s penchant for constantly getting injured. However, the script also lapses as did Anders’ “Daddy’s Home 2” from last year – into moments of slushy sentimentality. (My dear departed Dad always used to affect an exaggerated snore at such points, and I could hear him in my head at regular intervals during the film!). I would have preferred a harder and blacker edge to the comedy: something that last year’s excellent “Game Night” pulled off so well.
There are also a couple of characters in the film that were poorly scripted and which just didn’t work. While Octavia Spencer was fine (channelling an almost identical version of her wisecracking and sardonic character from “The Shape of Water“), I just had no idea what her colleague Sharon (Tig Notaro) was supposed to be. The tone was all over the place. Similarly, who should pop up on a balcony in an unexpected cameo but the great Joan Cusack. And very funny she is too for the 10 second interruption. But the writers having got her there just couldn’t leave alone and we get a plain embarrassing extended interruption that strikes a duff note in the flow of the film.
Summary
The film is amusing and harmless without taxing many brain cells. Most notably unlike many so-called American ‘comedies’ it did actually make me laugh at multiple points. I should also point out that my wife absolutely loved it, rating it a strong 4* going on 5*.
But the really cute thing is that…
…the film is “inspired by a true family”: namely Anders’ own. He and his wife fostered three kids out of the US foster service, so the script is undoubtedly loosely based on their own experiences, which give it an extra impact for some of Peter and Ellie’s lines. In an essay for TIME (source: bustle.com) Anders wrote:
My wife Beth and I had been talking for years about whether we should have kids,” he wrote. “For the longest time we just felt like we couldn’t afford it. Then I sold a couple of scripts and was feeling like I might have a career, but we were in our 40s and worried we had left it too long. We knew kids would make our life bigger, so one day I joked, ‘Why don’t we just adopt a five-year-old and it will be like we got started five years ago?'”
It gives you a completely different perspective on the film knowing this. My wife after the film was saying “I’m not sure how accurately it portrays the fostering process”. But it clearly does.