DATE REVIEWED: 8/7/24
TITLE: Instant Family
BOX OFFICE RATED: PG-13 (This is not suitable for GOD’s children.)
PRODUCTION YEAR: 2018 Paramount Pictures / Closest to the Hole Productions / Leverage Entertainment / Two Grown Men Productions
RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 1
REASON: The characters in this movie (children and adult) inspired by a true story swore constantly and often took God’s name in vain. It took place in California, where married couple Pete and Elinore “Ellie” Wagner owned a renovations business. The spouses fixed up run down houses. They even flipped five houses in one year and made a lot of money in doing so. Ellie bought another trashed house to renovate, without her husband’s knowledge. Ellie tried to convince her sister, Kim, and Kim’s husband, Russ, to move into the house because they had been trying to have children. Kim was having trouble getting pregnant and Russ didn’t want to pay $26,000 for in vitro pregnancy because it was a high expense for the richy rich. Pete and Ellie considered having kids, because he didn’t want to raise chidlren as a middle aged man after the time when Pete was a teen and his friend’s older dad had a heart attack when he ran long for the ball and died as the two boys and him played football in the street. Ellie was upset about all the half a million foster kids that needed to be adopted, and Pete argued that they weren’t the special kind of people to be foster parents but he changed his mind after he looked at all the kids on Ellie’s Apple laptop. Pete, Ellie and other couples hoping to foster attended the orientation at the Kinship Center led by social workers Karen and Sharon. Some of the couples walked out when they learned that they would have to complete an eight-week program and earn a certification in order to foster children they could adopt later and decided they didn’t want the broken system kids to test them and interfere with their marriage. The potential California foster care couples introduced themselves, and they included Caucasian Christians, an interracial couple with no success having their own children over the past three years of trying, and two gay men who joked that they had been trying to conceive a baby since the first night they met. Another candidate was October, a single Caucasian who wanted to adopt an African-American teen with athletic abilities who could get scholarships. Ellie believed that October was trying to copy the Blind Side and October was upset with Ellie for outing her in class for that. Pete compared fostering kids to rescuing dogs and suggested the nationwide system be renamed “rescue kids,” which embarrassed Ellie. Foster child, Brenda in her early adult years, was a guest speaker and she brought along her older adoptive parents because they were her rock and much needed support system. Brenda explained that her birth parents sold meth out of their house in her young years. Brenda delivered the meth drugs when she was 8, working for her addict parents. Brenda went on to say that she was sexually abused by the illegal drug customers until one day when the meth lab exploded and that happened when she was age 11. At that time, Brenda was put in the California foster care system and went to multiples homes because nobody wanted to adopt older kids and teens. Brenda gave statistics that half of the foster kids who aged out of foster care ended up in prison, addicted to drugs or dead. When Brenda was 14, she explained to the audience that her now adoptive parents took her in as foster parents and that was the turning point in her life. Brenda thanked her very real parents sitting in view, and in front of the government workers and potential foster parent crowd added that her dedicated true parents stood by her through all the many challenges she put them through over the years. That speech from a foster child survivor fueled the audience and encouraged the unsure adults to at least try and help care for a child in need born into horrific ungodly circumstances beyond HIS child’s control. Pete was excited about tackling foster fatherhood like he was flipping houses, but Ellie didn’t agree with the comparison. All the couples in the room then began the two months of foster program training with CPR. Karen and Sharon state workers tried to convince everyone to adopt sibling sets and believed it was best to keep the children together as a family under the same roof verses placing the children that were perhaps related in separate foster homes. The next few weeks were spent preparing homes for fostering. Pete and Ellie childproofed the house and set up bedrooms for their potential foster children. It wasn’t long before the parents were foster certified by the state of California. In celebration, they attended the county’s adoption fair with rainbow colored balloons and MeanGreenGiving sweatshirt at a park to meet the kids and pick out children they connected with who needed homes. Pete commented how odd it was to shop for children at a park and thought under a different circumstance that was something people would be arrested for. Pete and Ellie were interested in a girl who was underweight and looked like she had been chained to a radiator and abused. However, it turned out to be social worker Sharon’s own child and Sharon announced that the girl was her daughter and she never drank alcohol when she was pregnant so that wasn’t the cause of her daughter’s underweight challenge and moodiness. Everyone seemed to avoid the teenagers. Within earshot Ellie told Pete that it was because the foster teens masturbated and did drugs but Pete wanted to talk to them anyway. 15-year-old Lizzie Viara advised Pete and Ellie to stick with the younger kids and told the foster parents to leave the teens alone. Later on, the couple was interested in only teen Lizzie so they inquired about her with the social workers. As it turned out, teen Elizabeth (Lizzie) had an 11-year-old brother Juan and 6-year-old sister Lita Isabella, and their birth mom Carla set their house on fire after she passed out with a crack pipe. Carla was currently in prison and hadn’t contacted the children in two years, and their dad(s) was unknown and possible not legally from USA (children spoke Spanish and English). The state workers Karen and Sharon believed that the kids would be better off with Pete and Ellie than in their current home with the Muskies. The foster system workers commented that the Muskies appeared to be inbred siblings and didn’t fit with the children and may only be fostering because of the money paid by the state for each child, and cared nothing for the children. Pete compared them (majority white) taking in Hispanic children to the blue and white people in Avatar. Karen, the outspoken state worker, declared that if anyone questioned why they adopted children of a different race then they should ask those people how many kids they adopted. Pete and Ellie went to meet the three sibling kids, and Pete accidentally gave Juan a bloody nose playing basketball and then the two played hide and seek. Ellie and Lita played, and Lita hated on her doll and copied words from her mean foster parents and others. Pete and Ellie visited relatives for Thanksgiving and the large family watched football with their kids at a separate table. Pete and Ellie announced during grace that they weren’t going through with their decision to foster children. Immediately after that announcement, the other family members were glad because they never supported Pete and Ellie’s choice in the first place and didn’t want their kids interacting with drug addict and sexually abused foster children. Ellie’s dad, Jerry, wasn’t involved much in the conversation and watched the football game and was called out on being more interested in the deep state than foster kids. The other’s reaction didn’t sit well so Ellie and Pete declared that they would foster a bunch of kids who were not damaged goods and anyone with a problem with that, especially so-called family, should f**k off. They soon brought home Lizzie and her siblings to live in their nice house, where practically everything came from swap meets and flea markets. The younger kids seemed happy to finally have caring foster parents. Elizabeth was glad to be able to paint her own bedroom in her preferred choice of color…black. Some foster couples attended optional foster parent support group meetings and discussed their issues in a social group that wasn’t necessarily positive or helpful to the participants and neither was it righteous to expose and reveal private details of the abused children in the state program. In example, the devout church couple’s five-year-old was out of control and got into fights in kindergarten, and the young foster child was given a cell phone by a birth parent which interfered in a bad way with the child’s mental and physical health, and Karen and Sharon didn’t’ think the child ought to have it either. The other foster parents thought Pete and Ellie were crazy because Pete and Ellie believed their kids were near perfect and the new parents didn’t know what they were in for. At Christmas, brother Juan and sister Lita were more interested in playing inside the cardboard boxes that their robot and the dollhouse came in instead of the toys while rude teen Lizzie didn’t even want to open her presents. The foster family said grace at Christmas dinner, and a minute after Pete and Ellie wouldn’t let Lita eat the potato chips that she always ate at every meal prior because they were hoping to help the little girl overcome her unhealthy eating habits. Lita then pitched a hissy fit and screamed bloody murder as though she was in a horror film and she was up for best actress. Lizzie tried to calm her younger sister using Spanish words but that led to a mess with spilled food and drinks and Lita getting her chips. A fire started, and weirdly Pete tried to put it out with ketchup while his wife used liquid. Lita surfaced from under the tablecloth covered in red ketchup that made her look like Chucky’s next victim. To further play her part, Lita went into serial killer mode and held a SpongeBob knife on them, but eldest sis Lizzie broke it up and scolded Pete and Ellie for giving the kids milk in a glass and took her siblings away from the ruined Christmas meal. Lita declared that she hated Ellie. Another day, Lita had more screaming fits at the local store the family shopped at. Lita wanted a skinny Barbie instead of the fat Barbie doll that she got for Christmas. It caused a scene in the store that other children in line recorded on their cell phones. Lita called her older sister Lizzie a body positive whore (like the Barbie doll she got for Christmas) and Juan got in the bottom of the shopping cart and claimed that Pete hit him. Ellie encouraged those present to get the scene on film because the foster parents were unfit. Pete, Ellie and their foster kids went to a birthday party in the park where relatives and other foster people showed up. Teen Elizabeth excluded her foster mom from her love interest at school conversation she had with Ellie’s relatives and treated Ellie meanly by making her feel not wanted. Later on, Ellie tried to confiscate Lizzie’s phone because it was a distraction at the dinner table, but Lizzie claimed that foster parents couldn’t take things away from the foster children in the system so Ellie had no legal right to take away her cell phone. Pete and Ellie argued over bankruptcy and the foster kids at the next group social foster meeting, and everyone thought it was funny that they weren’t perfect foster family as they claimed to be in the beginning. Karen and Sharon advised Pete and Ellie to use the three R’s (regulate, relate and reason) on Lizzie because Elizabeth wanted to be her siblings’ parent even though the eldest teen sibling was a very bad parent. They advised Pete and Ellie to tell Lizzie it wasn’t okay to slash their throats while they were sleeping, which was what the Christian foster parents’ five-year-old foster child considered doing to them. October still had no foster child in her house but attended the group meetings anyway. The RRR method didn’t work on Lizzie because Elizabeth knew the system from being in it for multiple years and so she played it and the foster people as she chose. Grandma Sandy showed up one day (Pete’s mom) to meet the grand foster kids and Sandy got everyone Six Flags tickets so they all went to the park.Lizzie hung out with her questionable friends Kylie and Savanna, and cool Sandy gave them $100 to look at boys and go on rides while Juan threw up in the trashcan. Lizzie and her gang got back an hour past their meet up time and claimed that she was at the movies when she got out of the car as her foster family waited outside the closed park on benches. Pete and Ellie grounded Lizzie but Elizabeth got in Sandy’s favor by buying Sandy a customized airbrushed t-shirt with Grandma Sandy’s name on it. Pete and Ellie agreed that they hated the a-hole foster kids and liked it before they came into their lives, but they realized that they would never send the foster kids back or lie that a relative came to collect them and decided they were stuck with their poor choice to go into foster parenting. The family dog, Meatball, went to Lizzie’s bedroom door acting odd, so Ellie went to check it out and then discovered that grounded Lizzie had snuck girlfriends Kylie and Savannah into her room through the window. The teen girls called Ellie a Nazi bit**, so Ellie called them pussies and ordered them to leave back the way they came out the one story window. Lizzie stormed out of the house to leave with her girl gang. Pete and Ellie reminded Lizzie that she was grounded and told her to stop. Juan was messing with Pete’s nail gun on the front porch and dropped it when Lizzie told him to. The nail gun put a nail through Juan’s foot, so Pete and Ellie took the teen girls’ car to the hospital to have the nail removed since Pete’s old Ford truck was full of supplies in the driveway and blocked their other car in. Pete and Ellie told Karen at the hospital that it was their fault, but Lizzie argued that it was her fault because they were yelling at her for being out-of-control. Karen took Elizabeth off to privately discuss it with her and gave Pete and Ellie a thumbs-up behind Lizzie’s back for getting through to Lizzie. Another day when Ellie dropped the eldest teen off at school, Lizzie led Ellie to believe that Charlie was Jacob, the boy Lizzie liked at school, when Jacob was actually the adult janitor employed at the school. Lizzie joined the soccer team, and on the sidelines Ellie told Pete that she bonded with her foster daughter and even gave Lizzie dating advice to make a move on the schoolboy not knowing Jacob was an adult male. Little Lita called Pete her daddy for the first time after he put the head back on her doll that Juan ripped off, and Ellie was jealous. Ellie bonded with Lizzie by doing her hair, and then she left her hairbrush for Lizzie to use in the future with a little note with hearts. However, mean girl Lizzie threw it in the toilet and then tried to go to school wearing a revealing half-shirt and a short skirt, but Pete made her change. Lizzie called Ellie a douche, and then Ellie accidentally broke the crystal glass (not purchased resale) and Juan stepped in it and then so did Ellie because she didn’t pick up the broken glass on the kitchen floor. Pete took Lizzie to the house they were remodeling, where he showed her how to smash brick with a sledgehammer to vent anger. Lizzie skipped school that day and worked on the house alone with Pete like Pete and his wife used to. Once back home, Lizzie sort of apologized to Ellie for the hairbrush in the toilet since Pete told her to apologize and explained it was because her mom used to brush her hair but when Ellie tried to hug Lizzie, Lizzie’s fakeness came through. In a queer and unreal scene, the foster kids repeatedly barged in on Ellie while she had her pants down and sat on the toilet in the bathroom. As the days passed, the foster family all went to family events, school activities, sports and camping while Lizzie taught her foster parents some Spanish. Juan had a bad dream and called Ellie his mommy after she calmed him down. As it turned out, Carla got out of jail a few months before, and Lizzie asked Pete and Ellie to take her and her siblings to visit Carla. Sue the caseworker attended the visit, and Lizzie was glad to see Carla and called her their mom but Juan and Lita wanted to stay with their foster parents. Pete and Ellie mentioned to Carla how well the kids were doing in their care…Lita got a high score on her spelling test, Juan’s started playing piano and Lizzie’s school soccer team won most of their games. Irritated Lizzie interrupted and wanted to spend the day with Carla. Carla thanked Pete and Ellie for watching her children as though the foster parents were mere babysitters. The foster parents then left the foster children alone with the social state worker and the questionable birth female Carla and agreed to meet up again a few hours later. Pete reminded Ellie that the state took the kids away from Carla and not the couple because Carla was a crack addict and unfit parent who endangered God’s children by frequently abandoning them and subjecting them to illegal drugs nonstop. The two dads held hands at the next California state foster group meeting and shared the news about a couch fire caused by their foster kids Tina and Ryan and how the dads went to the cafeteria to stop the food fights and bored the kids with bird-watching. The gay men then declared that the California court cleared them to adopt foster kids. Lizzie and her siblings continued interacting with Carla during scheduled meetings set up by the state. After seeing Carla again the kids were noisy and misbehaved because of Carla’s presence and how it still affected them in a negative way. Karen and Sharon during the group meeting told Pete and Ellie that it wasn’t wrong to hope Carla went back to prison and stayed there, but nevertheless the foster parents had (past tense) made an impact on the kids’ lives and Carla was sober while with the kids. Pete and Ellie were upset to learn then in front of everyone that the judge changed the circumstances and the next hearing would decide whether or not the kids would return to Carla or stay with their foster parents. Ellie and Pete were upset because they were the ones who spent endless hours and helped keep the kids sane after each short visit with Carla. The system was messed up for bouncing the children from home to home and trying to stick them with people they were related but didn’t want them which caused a harmful environment and was not in the best interests of the children verses finding the foster kids a stable and loving home environment with parents that actually wanted to parent and daily cared about the safety and welfare of each child in their home. Everyone laughed in the foster group, including the state workers, when October announced that her foster kid wasn’t black but was instead short, white skin with red hair. Ellie’s mom, Jan, came over for a visit, and Lita marked a beard on grandma’s face with Sharpie markers. Kim and Russ announced that they planned to foster and then adopt like Ellie and Pete. Ellie then accidentally walked in on Lizzie because the door wasn’t locked, who was in the bathroom taking naked selfies of her self on her cell phone. Ellie confiscated Lizzie’s phone and read the texts that Jacob sent her pressuring Elizabeth into sending him naked photos of her teen self on her cell phone. High school employee Jacob then text teen Lizzie pictures of his private parts on her cell phone which the foster parents saw because they still had Lizzie’s cell phone. Ellie and Pete tried to delete the sexual photos from the teen’s cell phone. Lizzie dressed herself and got out of the bathroom and took the phone back and called Ellie a pretend mom that she didn’t have to listen to. Ellie went in the kitchen and guzzled some vodka. Jan advised her daughter that it helped her during trying times to remember why she became a mom in the first place. Pete and Ellie left the foster kids with their relatives and drove to see Brenda’s parents at their home that night to tell them their situation and get some advice. Brenda’s parents revealed that Brenda was not at home but their adopted daughter was back in drug rehab. Ellie called them phonies and was upset because Brenda was the reason they signed up for foster parenting in the first place. Brenda’s mom slapped Ellie hard across the face and explained that Brenda had been in and out of rehab ever since her birth mom’s boyfriend got her addicted to meth, and explained that they (adoptive parents) still selflessly helped Brenda through her abuse from years (before them) that obviously impacted her life through adulthood. Pete and Ellie left and promised to follow Brenda’s parents on Facebook. Pete and Ellie dropped Lizzie off at the high school the next school day. The foster parents got out of their car and left the two youngest children in the backseat alone. They confronted Charlie on school grounds, who they thought was Jacob. They pushed him around while the other teens watched the dramatic scene and threatened to call the police on the boy for sexual harassment, and Charlie cried and didn’t understand what the adults were talking about. Charlie revealed that he was Charlie, and he pointed out Jacob the janitor so Pete and Ellie left Juan and Lita in the car and ran into the school to find Jacob. The foster parents caught up with Jacob driving the Zamboni inside the hallway and grabbed Jacob’s wallet and discovered that he was 22, so Pete punched him and threatened to kill him if he went near Lizzie while Ellie kicked Jacob in the private parts. The principal arrived and left to call the police to have Jacob arrested even though Jacob argued that he never touched Lizzie. The female assist tried to stop the Zamboni before it the driverless machine rammed into the school wall. Pete and Ellie were arrested too, and the officer claimed that he would have done what they did while they screamed that their youngest foster children were alone in the backseat of their car. Sandy bailed Pete and Ellie out of jail, and the Terrance cab dropped them off at home later that night while state worker Karen took the kids and put them into a temporary foster home for the night. Sandy suggested that Pete and Ellie rewrite their statement to the judge because they wrote that they wanted the best for the kids whether it was staying with them or Carla. The next day at the Terrance County family court, the judge silenced Pete and Ellie and refused to listen to their statement. Instead, Lizzie’s statement was reviewed by the judge because she called out all the things that her foster parents did and said in the heated arguments they had (out of context). The judge took the word of lying and conniving teen Elizabeth, who was still hostile and bribed people to get back with a mom she could control and be able to raise her siblings the way she wanted (freedom to adult even though underage) while endangering them and herself. Lizzie helped Carla answer questions and fill out paperwork so that it appeared that Carla was OK and capable of caring for the children when it was likely Carla would have a relapse and be back on drugs before the day ended. The fooled California judge granted Carla custody of the children, so they spent their last night at their foster home with Pete and Ellie. Juan and Lita didn’t want to leave, but teen Lizzie reassured them and had told her younger siblings that Carla was their only parent. Pete and Ellie packed the kids’ things in suitcases instead of the typical foster kid travel with trash bags. Lizzie apologized for the statement she wrote because the things might not have been all true and out of context. Pete and Ellie gave Lizzie the second court statement they stayed up all night to write, that the tyrant judge wouldn’t let them read in court. Karen and Sharon showed up at the house and explained that Carla never showed to pick up the kids, so the workers went to her house. Carla backed out of getting custody of the kids and didn’t want to take care of the kids because she was back on drugs and lied to the court. The state workers revealed that Lizzy filled out the forms when the caseworker wasn’t supervising during visitation so Carla could get the kids back and teen Lizzy would have her freedom and gain control of her siblings. Lizzy ran off down the street upset, and Pete and Ellie went after her. Lizzy wanted to have Juan and Lita stay with their foster parents while Lizzy was placed in a different home, but Pete and Ellie loved the children and promised to always be there for them. All the kids wanted to stay with Pete and Ellie, including teen Lizzy after they said they wanted her to go to prom, and they hugged. Four months later, they were living in the new huge five bedroom remodeled house and the kids called Pete and Ellie their parents. At the next hearing, the California judge played Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” as he finalized the Wagner adoption in court and they were pronounced a family.Everyone present took a group picture with the California judge. This movie had a budget of $48 million and grossed $121 million at the box office. The movie cover art listed, Katie Walsh, LA Times, “Hilarious and heartwarming.” Mara Reinstein, US Weekly, “Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne make a wonderful comedy tag-team.” Scott Mantz, Collider, “A must see for the whole family and every family.”