Instant Family
Director: Sean Anders
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Rose Byrne, Octavia Spencer, Tig Notaro, Isabela Moner, Margo Martindale
Duration: 117 minutes
Class: 12A
KRS Releasing Ltd
Film not reviewed
When Pete (Mark Wahlberg) and Ellie (Rose Byrne) decide to start a family, they stumble into the world of adoption. When they meet a trio of siblings, including a rebellious 15-year-old girl (Isabela Moner), they find themselves unexpectedly speeding from zero to three kids overnight. Now, Pete and Ellie must hilariously try to learn the ropes of instant parenthood in the hopes of becoming a family.
Described as poignant, funny, heart-warming and authentic, Instant Family celebrates the notion that a family can come from anywhere. It is a comedy that promises to tease your funny bone, tug at your heart, sneak up and surprise you, coax your tears, get under your skin and to move in to live with you for a while, just like kids.
While foster care adoption can be a serious matter for a film, co-producer, co-writer and director Sean Anders is comfortable with also highlighting the light-hearted aspects because that is the personal story he wants to tell with Instant Family, having gone through the experience when he and his wife made the life-altering decision to adopt three biological siblings from foster care.
“A lot of the things that happened were funny and a lot of it was frustrating,” Anders says of the experience. “To go into a situation where you bring people into your home who all of a sudden become your children and you don’t even know them and they don’t know you, it is just like a comedy of manners right out of the gate.”
I hope that this movie helps lead to kids finding families and homes
He continues: “I thought it would be great if John Morris (co-writer/producer) and I could make a comedy about this subject matter without it having to be a gut-wrenching drama that people would be afraid to see. We could do the movie in this way because my real-life experience was funny, warm and heart-breaking. I hope that this movie helps lead to kids finding families and homes.”
Anders explains that years after adopting his children and he and Morris decided to write the story, he went back to talk to the social worker and met with more families and kids. “The comedy that appears in the film came together because a lot happened to me or to other people who shared their story and situations.”
Co-star Mark Wahlberg believes Sean’s personal experience will inform the movie. “I think it gives it an emotional anchor, and just an honesty and authenticity that makes it profoundly emotional and personal. And it’s something that everybody can identify with. And I think it’s going to be a very feel-good movie in a time where people need to feel good.”
Anders concurs. “To do a movie that has a really warm heart and can make people feel good, yet has a way to take people into some darker places, is honest,” he says.
“It is not fake or made up because I’ve met parents who have gone through journeys way harder than mine or the characters’ in the movie. The one thing that they all have in common is that every one of them said they wouldn’t have it any other way. That was a reason why I just thought this is definitely a movie that can be a comedy and can be warm-hearted.”
In an effort to raise more awareness about fostering, the National Foster Care Association of Malta recommends the film to anyone who truly wishes to understand what it means to foster a child. The association believes that all those – both adults and children – who have been through the experience of foster care can absolutely relate to the events that take place in the film.