Instant Family is a comedy/drama about Pete and Ellie, a couple, played by Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne, who decide to foster three siblings played by Isabela Moner, Gustavo Quiroz, and Julianna Gamiz. Not knowing the challenges that come with kids in general, the couple has to transform their everyday life to accommodate their new children.

As a comedy, this movie falls short in a couple of ways. First off, most of the comedy is only at the beginning. The story hangs on multiple jokes for an uncomfortable amount of time. Also, 90 percent of the jokes in this movie fall short of being funny.

In addition, the drama aspect of the movie wasn’t well made either. However, it was better than the comedy portion. The drama starts to amp up in the second half of the movie when stuff starts getting hard for the family. The viewers just don’t care because the characters aren’t developed enough. Sophomore Logan Abell said, “I think the storyline itself throughout the movie was poorly made and could’ve been revised in a better way to progress the story better. Some characters were well developed and some could’ve been improved on.” With all that said, the emotion in the movie is pretty good. The couple and the kids both experience challenges that a real foster family would.

Equally important, the family aspect of the movie was well performed. You can see the way the kids grow to like Pete and Ellie, which brings them closer to being a family. Pete and Ellie both want to make the fostering work, yet they don’t like the chaos because it is too far from their everyday quiet and relaxing day. This makes their characters a bit more developed but not enough for the audience to care.

Overall, Instant Family falls short of what it could be. If the director would have stuck to the drama being the main focus of the movie and slipped in some humor here and there throughout the movie, it would have made it much better. Even though it has some good family aspects, it doesn’t change the fact that it has bad humor, underdeveloped characters, and weak drama. Abell also said, “Overall, the movie had great jokes and clever lines but it wasn’t my type of movie.” If you are looking for good comedy and or drama to sit back to laugh or cry to, this is definitely not it. Instant Family is more like instant failure.