--- title: "Instant Family" year: 2018 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/instant-family" fi1m_score: 68 critics_score: 67 critics_reviews: 17 published: "2026-09-17T00:53:04.356866+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T00:53:19.021231+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Instant Family (2018) Directed by Sean Anders · 1h 58m · MPA PG-13 · Comedy, Drama **Fi1m score: 68** · Critics 67 from 17 reviews *In a sentence:* Two house flippers acquire three children and discover you cannot sand down a teenager > Sean Anders’s comedy about fostering, drawn from his own experience, is funnier than its trailer suggests and more honest than most studio comedies about how hard the thing is. It then keeps spoiling its best scenes with pratfalls and a guitar. ## Synopsis Pete and Ellie Wagner (Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne) buy tired houses, do them up and sell them on, and have never got round to children. After a family dinner at which their relatives, Pete’s mother Sandy (Margo Martindale) among them, ask the usual questions, Ellie starts reading a foster agency’s website. Soon the couple are sitting in a training class run by two social workers, Karen (Octavia Spencer) and Sharon (Tig Notaro), alongside other hopeful parents including Kim (Allyn Rachel) and Russ (Tom Segura). At an adoption fair they meet Lizzy (Isabela Merced), a teenager standing apart from the small children everyone else wants, and learn she has a younger brother and sister, Juan (Gustavo Escobar) and Lita (Julianna Gamiz). The Wagners agree to take all three on a trial placement. ## Review Sean Anders and John Morris have spent most of their careers writing broad studio comedies, *Daddy’s Home* among them, and *Instant Family* opens as though it will be another. Pete and Ellie Wagner (Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne) flip houses for a living, get needled about having no children over dinner, and decide, half as a dare, to look into fostering. What follows is drawn from Anders’s own experience of adopting, and it shows. The film knows things about the foster system that a gag writer would not, and it is at its best when it simply tells us them. It is at its worst when it loses its nerve and reaches for a pratfall. The training classes are the best-written stretch. Octavia Spencer and Tig Notaro run them as Karen and Sharon, one warm and one dry, and between them they deliver the facts of the system to a room of nervous couples: the honeymoon period, the child who will test you to see if you leave, the teenagers nobody picks. Notaro reads every grim statistic in the same flat voice, and Spencer’s Karen has the patience of a woman who has watched a hundred couples decide they are the exception. We laughed a great deal in that room. The adoption fair that follows, with the teenagers at a table by themselves, is played for comedy and lands as something sadder, and Anders has the sense not to underline it. Isabela Merced plays Lizzy, the teenager who has been raising her brother and sister, Juan (Gustavo Escobar) and Lita (Julianna Gamiz), for years and does not intend to stop because two strangers have a spare room. She gives the film its spine. She looks at the Wagners’ kitchen the way a tenant looks at a landlord, and she never lets us forget that she is a guest who could be moved on. Byrne is the better of the two leads, playing Ellie’s eagerness as though she has revised for it and is dismayed to find there is no exam. Wahlberg does his amiable regular guy, and he is likeable in it, and that is roughly the whole of what he does. The scene we keep coming back to is a small one. After a night of Lita screaming for crisps, the Wagners sit in the dark and admit in whispers that they would like to give the children back. We laughed, then felt slightly ashamed of ourselves, because the film had made us think the same thing and then showed us two people ashamed of it too. Anders lets the moment sit. It is the most honest minute in the film and it is over in about a minute. Brett Pawlak shoots it bright and flat, kitchens full of warm light, nothing to look at and nothing to trip over; it could be television. Clayton Hartley’s one good idea is the Wagners’ own house, a job half finished with tarpaulin over the banisters, which is the film’s only visual joke about what these two think they are doing. Michael Andrews’s score arrives on acoustic guitar whenever somebody is about to be moved and tells us so a bar early. Brad Wilhite cuts the comedy briskly and the drama not at all: the film runs 118 minutes and there are at least three scenes that end, and then end again. Margo Martindale, as Pete’s mother Sandy, is given a great deal of shouting; Julie Hagerty, as Ellie’s mother Jan, is given less and does more with it. The trouble is that Anders does not trust quiet. A conversation about the children’s birth mother is followed by somebody falling over. Juan is injured in slapstick fashion more times than one film should permit. A subplot about Lizzy and a phone is played as farce and should not have been. Each time the film gets somewhere true, it apologises with a gag, as though the audience had been promised one and might ask for its money back. The second half arrives at a question about the children’s mother that we will not describe. The film handles it more honestly than we expected and resolves it more neatly than it deserves. *Parenthood* understood that families are never finished, and this one keeps hinting at the same thing before tidying up. It is a 12A that a family can sit through together, which is rarer than it should be, and a child watching will learn something true about other children. The adults will laugh at Tig Notaro and wish she had been allowed to run the whole thing. *Fi1m score 68, published 17 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (17) - **IndieWire**, David Ehrlich (90/100, inferred): The critic calls it the best Mark Wahlberg movie in a long time, praising its clear sense of purpose in telling a heartfelt story about foster care and adoption. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/instant-family-review-mark-wahlberg-1202020442/) - **Los Angeles Times**, Katie Walsh (80/100, inferred): Anders delivers a funny and moving dramedy that hits the sweet spot of hilarious and heartwarming family dynamics. The strong supporting cast, including scene-stealing turns from Octavia Spencer and Tig Notaro, adds sharp humor and depth. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-instant-family-review-20181114-story.html) - **The Guardian** (75/100, inferred): The critic finds the film a sweet and funny comedy about foster parenting, drawn from personal experience and bypassing mawkish expectations with big-hearted humour. Wahlberg and Byrne's chemistry and the supporting cast, including care workers Tig Notaro and Octavia Spencer, are singled out for praise. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/feb/15/instant-family-review-cute-clueless-foster-parent-fun) - **Variety**, Owen Gleiberman (75/100, inferred): This is a well-executed, sentimental feel-good comedy that redefines family craziness as normal with a lite humanity. Wahlberg and Byrne are appealing as the befuddled couple, supported by strong comic turns from Octavia Spencer and Tig Notaro. [Read](https://variety.com/2018/film/reviews/instant-family-review-mark-wahlberg-rose-byrne-1203028058/) - **Empire**, Ian Freer (70/100, inferred): The critic finds the film an engaging, entertaining comedy-drama with its heart in the right place, closer to Parenthood than a generic knockabout. It wins out on performances, especially from Rose Byrne and Isabela Moner, though tonal shifts between comedy and schmaltz are not fully unified. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/instant-family-review/) - **The AV Club**, Caroline Siede (B-): The critic notes the film is more touching than funny, balancing broad slapstick with unexpected heart while delivering an old-fashioned message about the foster care system without sugarcoating its difficulties. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/mark-wahlberg-and-rose-byrne-build-an-instant-family-in-1830369156) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, Jon Frosch (70/100, inferred): The critic finds the film sloppy yet sincere, an unwieldy mix of jokes and maudlin moments that ultimately works as a broad but big-hearted crowd-pleaser thanks to its warmth and effort. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/instant-family-review-1161049/) - **Vulture** (70/100, inferred): The critic describes the film as both utterly heartfelt and utterly shameless, a dissonant mix of broad humor and earnest drama that mostly works despite jarring tonal shifts and stirs powerful emotions. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/2018/11/instant-family-review.html) - **The Telegraph** (3/5): The film is described as a big, beige armchair of a studio comedy that mines talking points from the director's own fostering experience for laughter and tears. Byrne and Wahlberg are praised for their appealing comic pairing, though the overall tone is seen as conventional. [Read](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/instant-family-review-mark-wahlberg-rose-byrne-raise-admirably/) - **Time Out**, Michael Gingold (60/100, inferred): The critic notes genuine heart and feeling in the adoption comedy based on the director's experiences, but wishes it maintained a consistent tone without repeated forced gags and contrived situations. Strong performances by Isabela Moner and Margo Martindale stand out. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/instant-family) - **RogerEbert.com**, Monica Castillo (55/100, inferred): The film has good intentions but is uneven in tone with mixed results from its swings between tragedy and goofy comedy. Isabela Moner's complex, fierce performance as the troubled teen stands out as the strongest element. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/instant-family-2018) - **Collider**, Matt Goldberg (B+): The critic praises the film for balancing heart and humor while addressing foster care issues accessibly without being preachy. They single out the comic chemistry between Wahlberg and Byrne and the self-aware handling of sensitive topics. [Read](https://collider.com/instant-family-review/) - **HeyUGuys**, Linda Marric (4/5): The critic finds the film surprisingly deep and moving beyond its marketing as a feel-good comedy, praising the performances especially Isabela Moner and the handling of fostering themes with humor and heart. [Read](https://www.heyuguys.com/instant-family-review/) - **The Wrap**, William Bibbiani (75/100, inferred): The film starts as a broad comedy but reveals itself as an earnest and moving drama about foster parenting. The critic praises its honest portrayal of the challenges while affirming that love makes the effort worthwhile. [Read](https://www.thewrap.com/instant-family-film-review-rose-byrne-mark-wahlberg/) - **Deadline**, Pete Hammond (70/100, inferred): This well-meaning comedy mixes laughs with a positive message about foster care and adoption, making it a pleasant family film. The critic highlights the strong chemistry and performances of leads Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne. [Read](https://deadline.com/video/instant-family-review-mark-wahlberg-rose-byrne-foster-care-comedy/) - **Consequence** (20/100, inferred): The critic finds the film treacly, pandering, and tonally confusing, criticizing its clichéd suburban humor and failure to deeply engage with the subject matter despite good intentions. They single out the weak performances and predictable script. [Read](https://consequence.net/2018/11/film-review-instant-family/) - **Eye for Film**, Angus Wolfe Murray (20/100, inferred): The review dismisses the film as unengaging and clichéd, criticizing its predictable plot about adoption and lack of genuine emotional pull despite decent performances from the leads. [Read](http://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/instant-family-2018-film-review-by-angus-wolfe-murray) ## Details - **Director:** Sean Anders - **Director:** Sean Anders - **Writer:** John Morris, Sean Anders - **Cinematography:** Brett Pawlak - **Editor:** Brad Wilhite - **Music:** Michael Andrews - **Production design:** Clayton Hartley - **Costume design:** Lisa Lovaas - **Producer:** Mark Wahlberg, John Morris, Stephen Levinson - **Cast:** Mark Wahlberg as Pete Wagner; Rose Byrne as Ellie Wagner; Allyn Rachel as Kim; Isabela Merced as Elizabeth “Lizzy” Viara; Julie Hagerty as Jan; Tig Notaro as Sharon; Octavia Spencer as Karen; Gustavo Escobar as Juan Viara - **Runtime:** 1h 58m - **Certificate (MPA):** PG-13 - **Release (the US):** 16 November 2018 - **Genres:** Comedy, Drama - **Budget:** $48 million - **Box office:** $121 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUfZq3DUd3Y ## Where to watch in the US - Starz: streaming - Hulu: add-on, hd, leaving 2026-10-01 - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd, leaving 2026-10-01 - Amazon Prime Video: add-on, uhd - Apple TV: add-on, hd - Apple TV: rent $4.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: rent $4.99, uhd - Apple TV: buy $6.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $14.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: AE, AR, AT, AU, AZ, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HU, ID, IE, IL, IN, IT, JP, KR, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, TH, TR, UA, US, VN, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Parenthood* (1989): Ron Howard’s messy, generous family comedy, which this one plainly grew up watching - *Short Term 12* (2013), Fi1m 86: Life inside a foster facility, told from the staff’s side with no jokes to hide behind — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/short-term-12.md) - *Shoplifters* (2018), Fi1m 89: Kore-eda’s found family in Tokyo asks the same question without a guitar underneath — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/shoplifters.md) - *Lion* (2016), Fi1m 84: An adopted boy goes looking for the family he lost; patient and unexpectedly tough — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-lion-king.md) - *The Kids Are All Right* (2010): Two parents, two teenagers and an intruder; sharper about what a household costs --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/instant-family