‘Instant Family’ Is a White Savior Narrative That Looks at the White Savior Narrative

There are many pitfalls where a movie like Instant Family can stumble. It’s a particularly dangerous landscape for non-white audiences, where movies like Avatar and The Blind Side have long laid the groundwork for an eye-rolling expectation of white savior films to unsettling results. To hold faith in a Hollywood depiction of transracial adoption can be a tall order, but that’s the faith Instant Family asks of its audience. Given its theme and genre, there are two standards by which a film like this one can ultimately be measured: 1) Is it fucked up? and 2) is it funny? And while the opinion of whether it excels at the first question is best left to each individual viewer, Instant Family does operate in a level of self-awareness by discussing the white savior narrative and looking some of its challenges in the eye. The film distinguishes itself from past egregious white savior stories by interweaving their pitfalls into its story and acknowledging them directly. When it comes to Avatar and The Blind Side specifically, they are called out by name, like a young Eminem attacking Vanilla Ice to get ahead of the comparison and distinguish himself as something different. Instant Family might inherently fall into the pitfalls of previous white savior films simply by existing — after all, it’s impossible to separate the movie from the Hollywood and American cultures that allow it to be greenlit in the first place. If there are any contributions it offers though, it’s that Instant Fa…