DVD Review: Instant Family

Instant Family
[DVD Instant]

This one is a mild, family, comedic drama, with occasional forays into serious social commentary and occasional descents into almost slapstick comedy. Mark Wahlburg and Rose Byrne play Pete and Ellie, a married couple with busy lives, who’ve never gotten around to have kids of their own. A series of comical incidents, and family/peer pressures, lead them down the path towards becoming foster parents. But instead of a single youth child to help provide a stable home for, they end up taking on the challenge of raising three siblings — sarcastic teenager Lizzy, accident-prone pre-teen Juan, and precocious but emotionally temperamental Lita.

Instant Family is funny, with a sentimental touch. The entire cast is quite excellent, particularly Isabela Merced as teenager Lizzy, who’s had to serve as a surrogate parent to her two young siblings, and who desperately wants to be reunited with her drug-addicted biological mother. Octavia Spencer and Tig Notaro provide extreme comic relief as two welfare workers who put Pete and Ellie through foster parent boot camp and remain advisors to the new family. This is a fun, poignant, inspiring little film — perhaps it glosses over the inherent difficulties and challenges in becoming foster parents a bit in search of its humor, but it definitely has its heart in the right place, and leaves you feeling “up” by the end.

[ Internet Movie Database entry for this film ] | [ official Instant Family web site ]

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

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