21 Movies Like Instant Family

Posted on November 13, 2021

Movies like Instant Family not only make you laugh out loud, but it makes you count your blessings and appreciate family. Just to recap, Instant Family follows a married couple who decide to adopt a child through the foster care system. They are so excited to start their family finally, but instead of adopting one child, they end up going home with three!

Parenthood is not at all what they were expecting! If you enjoy watching heartwarming movies about family, you will adore the movies we have selected for you.

Movies like Instant Family include:

Adult Beginners
The Edge Of Seventeen
Life As We Know It
Daddy’s Home
Change Of Plans
Big Daddy
Blended
Martian Child
Raising Helen
Happy Christmas
Foster
It Takes Two
Like Father
Free Willy
Gifted
Tammy
Life Of The Party
Yes Day

If you are looking for more movies like Instant Family, you have arrived at the right place! Enjoy reading about the brilliant movies that we have installed for you below!

Contents show

1. Adult Beginners

Director: Rose Katz

Cast: Rose Byrne, Bobby Cannavale, Nick Kroll, Joel McHale

Genre: Drama, Comedy

Movie Plot

On the evening of his company’s big launch, a narcissistic young entrepreneur crashes and burns! His life turns completely upside down, leaving him with no choice but to move in with his brother-in-law, estranged pregnant sister, and three-year-old nephew into their home in Manhattan. Before long, he has gone from being a successful entrepreneur to being his nephew’s nanny!

2. The Edge Of Seventeen

Director: Kelly Fremon Craig

Cast: Hailee Steinfeld, Blake Jenner, Woody Harrelson, Kyra Sedgwick

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Movie Plot

Seventeen is a complicated and awkward stage of a young girl’s life. Just ask Nadine, who isn’t exactly popular; in fact, she feels invisible to everyone else except her best friend, Krista.

Her overly popular older brother has stolen her limelight all her life, and now she finds out that he has stolen her best friend too by dating her! Nadine feels more alone than ever before until she meets a thoughtful teen who gives her some hope for the future and makes her realize that life isn’t all that bad.

3. Life As We Know It (2010)

Director: Grey Berlanti

Cast: Katherine Heigl, Josh Duhamel, Josh Lucas, Christina Hendricks

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance

Movie Plot

Eric Messer and Holly Berenson just can’t stand each other. After a terrible first date, they realized that they had a strong mutual hate for one another. But life has a plan for the two of them that will help each other see a different side of each other.

After a tragic accident, Eric and Holly become the caretakers of their goddaughter Sophie. The only thing is, the will suggests that they live together while raising Sophie to allow her to have a normal life experience.

For the first time, they need to put their differences aside and work together raising a baby and juggling their social and career commitments. Will the two enemies find common ground, or are they just too different?

4. Daddy’s Home (2017)

Director: Sean Anders

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Will Ferrell, Linda Cardellini

Genre: Comedy, Family

Movie Plot

Brad Whitaker just wants to be loved by his stepchildren, and he wants them to see him as their own dad. Despite his best efforts, the kids aren’t as easy to win over as he believes, and things get even worst when their arrogant biological father, Dusty, comes to visit his kids.

Brad cannot believe that their deadbeat dad gets their love and attention, leaving Brad completely buried in the background. However, Dusty soon learns that he will have to deal with all the struggles and pains of the children to be a good dad.

5. Change Of Plans (2011)

Director: John Kent Harrison

Cast: Justin Kelly, Brooke White, Joe Flanigan

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Family

Movie Plot

Jason and Sally Danville’s lives are in absolute turmoil when, after a tragic accident, they become the caretakers of four children. They will need to adjust their entire lives to be good guardians for these four young kids who have lost their parents.

6. Big Daddy (1999)

Director: Dennis Dugan

Cast: Adam Sandler, Cole Sprouse, Joey Lauren Adams, Rob Schneider

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Movie Plot

Responsibility is not how thirty-two-year-old Sonny Koufax roles. When his girlfriend leaves him for another older man, who isn’t a man-child, Sonny tries to prove that he is a good and responsible grownup by adopting a five-year-old boy named Julian.

His plan completely backfires, and she still shows no interest in ever getting back with him. But Sonny has bigger problems than being dumped; he can’t return the boy and takes responsibility for the kid.

Will he learn what it means to be a responsible, sensible adult, or will he be proof that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?

7. Blended (2014)

Director: Frank Coraci

Cast: Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore, Bella Thorne, Terry Crews

Genre: Comedy, Romance

Movie Plot

Jim is a recently widowed dad of three girls, who is a bit arrogant and judgemental. Lauren is a recently divorced mom of two boys and tries to get her game back by finding Mr. Right. Their friends set Jim and Lauren up on a blind date, and the evening turns out to be an absolute failure.

It is obvious that they just don’t match, so they move on. Until one day, they, unbeknown to each other, buy half of the same holiday package at a luxurious South African resort.

To make matters even worst, they are all jammed into the same suite, which leaves them no choice but to try harder to get along for the sake of the children. Something happens on the trip when they participate in many family activities together, which makes them think that maybe fate had something to do with this trip.

8. Martian Child (2007)

Director: Menno Meyjes

Cast: Bobby Coleman, John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Joan Cusack

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Family

Movie Plot

A man who wants to experience what it is like to be a father adopts a unique little boy who believes he is from Mars. He tries to gain the boy’s trust by teaching him the ways and rules of planet earth.

However, while devoting all his time to teaching and taking care of his unusual adopted son, the man starts to believe that the kid really could be an alien from another planet.

9. Raising Helen (2004)

Director: Garry Marshall

Cast: Kate Hudson, Hayden Panettiere, Joan Cusack, John Corbett

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance

Movie Plot

Helen Harris is a self-involved single woman who is thriving in her fashion career. She lives a luxurious life in New York City and has no responsibility for anyone but herself. One day Helen receives a shocking call that her sister and her husband have died tragically in a car accident.

Her sister and her brother-in-law named her the sole guardian of their son and two daughters to her rather unpleasant and unexpected surprise.

It is a rollercoaster ride as Helen tries to be a parent, and she must learn to stop doubting herself; otherwise, this arrangement will never work out. Helen needs to choose between the life she always loved or the new loves of her life.

10. Happy Christmas

Director: Joe Swanberg

Cast: Anna Kendrick, Joe Swanberg, Mark Webber, Lena Dunham

Genre: Romance, Indie

Movie Plot

Jenny is in her twenties, has recently been dumped, and her irresponsible behavior has only gotten her into trouble so far. Feeling lost in her world, she asks her young filmmaker brother if she can stay with him, his novelist wife, Kelly, and their two-year-old son in Chicago for a while until she gets her life together.

Jenny’s presence in their once-quiet home has turned their whole life upside down. Jenny and her friend, Carson, plan the evolution of Kelly’s career and life. Not long after her arrival, Jenny enters a very rocky relationship with their son’s baby sitter-cu-pot dealer.

Jenny must find it in herself to change her bad, irresponsible ways and grow up. She realizes through all the drama that moving here may have been the best choice she ever made.

11. Foster (2011)

Director: Jonathan Newman

Cast: Joan Gruffudd, Toni Collette, Haley Mills, Richard E. Grant

Genre: Comedy, Drama Family

Movie Plot

Alec and Zooey Morrison are a married couple who are having a tough time making their marriage work. They could never conceive, and a child is what they have longed for all through their years of marriage.

To their surprise, a seven-year-old boy mysteriously appears on their doorstep, and he calls himself Eli. He explains that he was sent to them by the foster agency, but the boy seems to be wise beyond his years. He becomes the ear that hears all the heartbreak and issues in the couple’s marriage.

He gives them some wonderful and romantic suggestions on how to repair their broken marriage, and slowly they start to find the love they lost over the years. However, things may not be exactly as they seem.

12. It Takes Two (1995)

Director: Andy Tennant

Cast: Mary-Kate Olsen, Ashley Olsen, Kirsty Alley, Steve Guttenberg

Genre: Comedy, Melodrama, Family

Movie Plot

Amanda is an orphaned tomboy who is tough as nails. Alyssa is a poor little rich girl whose evil stepmother drives her crazy and, in her opinion, isn’t good enough for her father. One day, the two girls meet after running into each other at a summer camp, and to their surprise, they realize that they look exactly like each other.

How can this be? Are they twins that were separated at birth? Alyssa wants to prevent her father from marrying his gold digger girlfriend.

Amanda doesn’t want to be adopted by a cruel family and separated from Diane’s loving social worker.

Together they devise a plan to switch their identities and help bring Diane and Alyssa’s father together as they believe they will be great together. Will their plan work, and how long before their covers are blown?

13. Like Father (2018)

Director: Lauren Miller Rogen

Cast: Kristen Bell, Danielle Davenport, Kimiko Glenn

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Movie Plot

When a woman is ditched at the altar, she decides to go on her honeymoon trip anyway. Joining the heartbroken woman on what was supposed to be a fairy tale honeymoon is her estranged father, with whom she has never had a relationship.

Her father is an over-achiever who decided to leave her mother because he felt his family was holding him back from a successful career. Now, a workaholic and her over-achieving father must work through their differences while they are stuck together.

She realizes that there may be more to life than how she has been living, and her father realizes the importance of choosing family over career.

14. Free Willy (1993)

Director: Simon Wincer

Cast: Jason James Richter, August Schellenberg, Michael Madson

Genre: Drama, Adventure, Family

Movie Plot

After vandalizing a theme park, Jesse, a maladjusted orphan, is placed with foster parents, and as punishment and making his amends, he is ordered to work at the park he vandalized. One day, Jesse meets a young Orca named Willy.

He senses kinship between him and the killer whale because Willy, too, was separated from his family. As time goes by, the two form a very strong bond, and a kind whale trainer, Rae Lindley, helps him teach Willy a whole routine of different tricks.

Jesse starts healing from the pain of his past, and Willy is changing something in him for the better. However, when dial, a greedy park owner, witnesses their relationship, he makes a plan to steal Willy and make money off of the whale and his new best friend. Jesse has finally found his purpose in life; to save the best thing that ever happened to him.

15. Gifted (2017)

Director: Marc Webb

Cast: Mckenna Grace, Chris Evans, Jenny Slate, Lindsay Duncan

Genre: Drama, Comedy

Movie Plot

When a seven-year-old child prodigy’s parent dies, Mary is sent to live in the care of her uncle Frank in a coastal town in Florida. She is a spirited young lady, and he tries everything to give her the normal life that her mother wanted for her.

Her teacher discovers that Mary is extremely special, judging by her unbelievable mathematical abilities, and soon, word of this reaches Evelyn, Frank’s formidable mother.

Her reason for visiting is to tell Frank that Mary is wasting her gift by being in a mainstream school, and she tries to win sole custody of Mary. But Frank won’t give up fighting for his niece as he wants to honor his sister’s wishes of making Mary’s life as normal and happy as it should be

16. Tammy (2014)

Director: Ben Falcone

Cast: Melissa McCarthy, Susan Sarandon, Ben Falcone, Kathy Bates

Genre: Comedy, Romance

Movie Plot

Imagine losing your job, crashing your car, and finding your husband in bed with your next-door neighbor! Well, that is exactly what happened to the burger-joint waitress, Tammy! Tammy decides it’s time for her to pack up her life and hit the road.

There is just one small problem: she is completely broke, and her options are extremely limited without transportation or money. Left with no other choice, Tammy decides to take a road trip with her grandmother, Pearl. After all, she has money, a car, and a desire to see Niagara Falls.

Even though this is not at all what she had in mind, she realizes it might just be exactly what she needs in her life right now.

17. Life Of The Party (2018)

Director: Ben Falcone

Cast: Melissa McCarthy, Gillian Jacobs, Debbie Ryan, Molly Gordon

Genre: Comedy

Movie Plot

Deanna and her husband are finally doing the thing they have regrated forever; dropping their daughter off at college. While feeling distraught and completely vulnerable, Deanne’s husband says he wants to leave her for another woman just as they drive away from the college.

At first, she is furious, shocked, frantic, and heartbroken, but then she decides to do the one thing she never got to do after becoming pregnant; finish college! She surprises her daughter with the news, and she doesn’t seem too happy about it at first.

But her daughter has a change of heart when she sees the significant change in her mother and realizes that her mother needs this to find herself again. She is even having the full college experience filled with frat boys and parties.

18. Yes Day (2021)

Director: Miguel Arteta

Cast: Jennifer Garner, Jenna Ortega, Edgar Ramirez, Julian Lerner

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Movie Plot

A tired and frustrated husband and wife realize how many times they say the word “no” to their children a day. After admitting that they would not even hang out with people like them, they decide to have a yes day.

This means that they are not allowed to decline anything their kids ask for for an entire day. They are in for an adventurous ride, but maybe all they needed was to be reminded that even when you grow up and life seems uninteresting, you can still be a kid every once in a while!

19. Parental Guidance (2012)

Director: Andy Fickman

Cast: Billy Crystal, Marisa Tomei, Bette Midler, Bailee Madison

Genre: Family, Comedy

Movie Plot

Artie Decker, a minor-league baseball announcer, and his wife only see their daughter, Alice, very seldomly. One day, Alice phones them and asks them something they never expected; to watch their kid so that they can attend a trip for work.

Grandma and grandpa have no idea what they are in for, and they will soon learn that parenting today is very different from when they were children.

The three children turn out to be a bit of a handful for their old-fashioned grandparents, but through the duration of their stay, the children teach the old-timer to let go a bit and bend the rules. To their surprise, they adjust to the changing way better than they ever thought they would.

20. We’re The Millers (2013)

Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber

Cast: Jennifer Aniston, Jason Sudeikis, Emma Roberts, Will Poulter

Genre: Comedy, Crime

Movie Plot

David, a small-time weed dealer, learns that no good deed ever goes unpunished. As he tries to help two teens from an attack from thugs, they jump him instead and steal his pot stash and cash. To make things right with his dangerous supplier, he must travel to Mexico to pick up his latest shipment.

He has to come up with a plan to blend in as a tourist to prevent being busted, arrested, or even worst, killed! He puts together a family to accompany him on his drug retrieval trip and offers each of them a cut of the payment.

A stripper, drop-out teenage girl, and a do-good boy all get into an RV and begin their trip to Mexico. What David thought was a fool-proof plan quickly turns into a hilarious life or death adventure!

21. Cheaper By The Dozen (2003)

Director: Shawn Levy

Cast: Steve Martin, Hillary Duff, Piper Perabo, Alyson Stoner

Genre: Comedy, Family

Movie Plot

Kate and Tom Baker have had a rather busy life. For starters, the couple has twelve children, and to juggle work and family, they had to make drastic compromises in their careers. Tom became a high-school football coach, and Kate had to retire from her career as a journalist to raise her extremely large family.

Every day is the same story for the Baker’s; cooking, cleaning, checking homework, doing loads and loads of laundry, and being emotionally supportive to their children. However, things start to change when A publisher buys kate’s parenting memoir, and at the same time, Tom is offered a coaching job at a college in a new city.

After they move into their new place, Kate leaves Tom in charge of the kids while going on a book tour. Tom soon makes the horrifying realization that he is in way over his head!

References:

Looper: Movies Like Instant Family Dramedy Fans Need to See

Ranker: Movies Like Instant Family

Taste Dive: Instant Family

Binge: What Are the Best Movies Like Instant Family