Instant Family

Grade: B –

Director: Sean Anders

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Rose Byrne, Isabela Moner, Gustavo Quiroz, Julianna Gamiz, Octavia Spencer, Tig Notaro, Margo Martindale, and Julie Hagerty

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hr.

There are a couple of films debuting over the next several weeks that are directly drawn from their filmmakers’ life experiences. Roma, which will be released (and reviewed) next month, is inspired by director Alfonso Cuarón’s childhood in Mexico City. Meanwhile, opening this week is Sean Anders’ Instant Family, based on Anders and his wife’s personal journey to foster and then adopt three children. Both are earnest films revolving around the nature of family, each obviously informed by their director’s knowledge and intimate familiarity. The difference is that Roma is helmed by the maker of Y Tu Mamá También, Children of Men, and Gravity. Meanwhile, Instant Family is brought to you by the director of both Daddy’s Home films and the Adam Sandler debacle That’s My Boy, who also wrote Horrible Bosses 2, We’re the Millers, and Mr. Popper’s Penguins. Still, the effect of diminished expectations works in Anders’ favor, since while flawed, Instant Family surprises as a heartfelt, even sober assessment of the foster parenting system.

Pete (Mark Wahlberg) and Ellie (Rose Byrne) are seemingly capable of conceiving children (already a difference from the typical Hollywood depiction of child adoption). However, they stumble into the world of foster parenting out of an honest desire to save unwanted children. Eschewing the usual focus on infants and youngsters, Pete and Ellie are drawn to two normally overlooked categories of foster children: teenagers and siblings. Their initial hope to adopt one child balloons to a Latino family of three: smart but rebellious fifteen-year-old Lizzie (Isabela Moner), her younger, anxious, and somewhat dimwitted brother Juan (Gustavo Quiroz), and the cute but headstrong Lita (Julianna Gamiz).

The honeymoon of Pete and Ellie’s fledgling family doesn’t last long before Lita is flinging any meal that doesn’t include potato chips, Juan is accidently shooting himself with a nail gun, and Lizzie is sneaking off with her friends and exchanging nude selfies with the school’s janitor. Yet, while the typical struggle to form new family is central to Instant Family, Anders’ firsthand experience with the process is obvious throughout. A court review of the parental rights of Lizzie, Juan, and Lita’s birth mother accurately focuses on her progress and the goal of reunification, not the desires of Pete and Ellie. There are moments of awful weakness when Pete and Ellie wistfully recall their carefree salad days before kids, and quietly contemplate returning their wards to their previous foster home, a ramshackle environment where the parents house a flock of fosters just for the government stipend.

But for all its factual underpinning, Instant Family is still a comedy, and that’s where it falters. Anders hasn’t met a reaction shot he doesn’t like, and the comedic setups are both slapdash and pandering. Pete and Ellie’s foster support group is a United Colors of Benetton checklist: the religious couple, the interracial couple, the Hispanic couple, the gay couple, etc. More off-putting, however, is the single mom who candidly, shamelessly, and incessantly wants to adopt an athletic African-American kid who will become her own personal Blind Side—it’s hard to believe someone like her would clear any vetting process.

The supporting cast has a few bright spots. Octavia Spencer and Tig Norato aren’t quite believable as a social worker team, but their comedic rapport fills some narrative dead spots. The always solid Margo Martindale gusts in like a breath of fresh air, playing Pete’s overbearing but kindly mother. Otherwise, the only purpose served by the rest of the cast is letting us know that Julie Hagerty (as Ellie’s ditzy mom) and Joan Cusack (who literally pops up for a late, pointless three-minute cameo) are still around.

Although Instant Family is self-aware enough to acknowledge and address its white savior narrative, the film still comes from an upper middle class POV, perhaps unavoidably given Anders’ experiences. The perspectives of Pete and Ellie, while sincere, aren’t as illuminating, interesting, or tragic as the upbringing of Lizzie, Juan, and Lita, particularly their odyssey through the foster system and the abuses they suffered that are only referenced in vague passing. Indeed, the travails that led to their birth mother losing custody remain abstract and unseen. Instant Family is heartwarming and even genuine, but it’s also as elemental as its ready-to-consume title implies.

Horrible Bosses 2

Worst (or best?) episode of "Friends" ever

Grade: C –

Director: Sean Anders

Starring: Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, Charlie Day, Chris Pine, Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Aniston, Jamie Foxx and Kevin Spacey

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 48 min.

There’s a not-so-fine line between pushing the comedic envelope and blind bad taste. When Jennifer Aniston’s character in Horrible Bosses 2 graphically fantasizes about two 14-year-old boys having sex at camp, it’s a wince-inducing moment that’s hard to walk back.

Perhaps the pubescent parable by Aniston’s sex-obsessed dentist Julia Harris could have been shoved out of our synapses if it took place in isolation. However, Horrible Bosses 2 is a film that opens with an onanistic sight gag and the three lead characters’ names—Nick, Kurt and Dale—being unwittingly conflated into a racial slur, and it closes with Harris expressing her predilection for somnophilia.

In-between are repeated rape references and racial stereotypes. But every sidelong N-word is OK since there’s always a character of color around to chastise it, right? And when a rich prick demeans his Asian housekeeper, the film’s idea of balance is when she secretly soils the boss’ toothbrush with her backside.

The fault lies squarely with writer-director Sean Anders, brought in to replace Seth Gordon, who helmed the surprisingly successful original about three put-upon pals who plot to kill their overbearing bosses. Anders’ most recent directorial credit was the reprehensible Adam Sandler vehicle That’s My Boy, and he was last seen helping sully the screenplays for Dumb and Dumber To, We’re the Millers and Mr. Popper’s Penguins.

Even the film’s title is now a misnomer. Nick (Jason Bateman), Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) and Dale (Charlie Day) have escaped the clutches of their day-job drudgery to launch a start-up manufacturing an invention named “The Shower Buddy.” But after sinking all their fortunes into churning out thousands of their ablution aids, Bert Hanson (Christoph Waltz), the product’s exclusive millionaire retailer, reneges on their deal in order to acquire the trio’s invention on the cheap once their business goes belly-up.

To save their shirts and company, Nick, Kurt and Dale decide to kidnap Rex (Chris Pine), Hanson’s preening son, and hold him for ransom. The half-baked plot becomes more hairbrained once Rex blackmails the guys into letting him join the scheme in exchange for a handsome share of the money.

The snappy comic chemistry that made the first Horrible Bosses a hit is still there: Sudeikis the horndog oaf, Bateman the slow-burn straight man, and Day the manic mouthmouth. Pine acquits himself well even though his spoiled brat with daddy’s issues seems to be operating on another narrative plain. But Waltz was actually funnier in Django Unchained, and the presence of Jonathan Banks as a police detective only reminded me how I hated the way Mike died in Breaking Bad.

Indeed, it’s telling that anytime the film needs a shot in the arm, it recalls the supporting cast from the first film. Kevin Spacey has a grand ‘ole profane time as a now-jailed Dave Harden, but it’s Jamie Foxx who steals every scene reprising “MF” Jones, a hardened street hood who harbors hopes of opening a Pinkberry franchise.

Unfortunately, Horrible Bosses 2’s sporadic chuckles never congeal into a memorable whole. And with its barrage of gay gags and other egregious overtones, that’s probably for the best.

That's My Boy

Time to take those SNL training wheels off...

Grade: F

Director: Sean Anders

Starring: Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg, Leighton Meester, Vanilla Ice, James Caan, Milo Ventimiglia, Tony Orlando, Will Forte, Nick Swardson, Ciara and Peggy Stewart

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 54 min.

The only thought-provoking part of an Adam Sandler comedy (applying that label very loosely) is deciphering the populist appeal of his vile, irksome blights on cinema. My working hypothesis is his most well-received films revel in skewering the privileged class while uplifting the masses and misfits. In That’s My Boy, the corporate and country club set catch Sandler’s ire (at one point, a character literally expels sundry bodily secretions on a Vera Wang wedding dress), while the heroes are beer-swilling ruffians, strippers and washed-up B-listers playing themselves. Todd Bridges? Like I said, misfits.

Unfortunately, it’s also a movie that opens by glorifying pedophilia for guffaws and ends by doing the same with incest. Years after fathering a child with his 8^th grade teacher when he was 13 year old, Donny Berger (Sandler), now an insolvent slob and bastardized Bahston caricature, tries to reconnect with his estranged son, the cartoonishly milquetoast Todd Peterson nee Han Solo Berger (Andy Samberg) on the eve of Todd’s wedding to Jamie (Leighton Meester), the requisite Sandler Movie Shrew™.

It’s all part of Donny’s contrived moneymaking scheme to get out of tax trouble, but in the cockeyed world of Sandler, gobs of carousing and inappropriate conduct somehow point to ill-fitting sentimentality. What’s more, the most slovenly, repugnant cretin is inexplicably welcomed with open arms by buttoned-down blowhards just waiting for someone to help release their inhibitions.

Chronicling the film’s many sins—and flat-lined follies—would require an R-rated review. Suffice it to say you know a script has problems when Vanilla Ice has the funniest lines. That’s My Boy levies a taxing onslaught of racist, sexist and scatological bile, laced with enough celebrity cameos to leave you pondering how many of them had access to the entire script (likely answer: none). If this is what passes for populism, consider me a one-percenter.

Neil Morris