Instructions Not Included

For some reason this movie has a 56% on Rotten Tomatoes, which makes it "rotten". Instructions not Included is the cutest, funniest, most amusing father/daughter film I've seen. It certainly isn't a family film in cases where children would be watching it, but I watched this with my mom and we both really liked it. It certainly isn't award winning, but it provides for some decent plot twists and an unapologetic tearjerker ending, which some might call cheap, but I thought it was really smart. Yes, most of the movie is a goofy and cute documentation of how a father would do anything for his daughter, and the whole movie is sort of misleading about what the reveal will be at the end, but the last 30 minutes, I would say, has the most abrupt change in tone from the rest of the movie, and if you have any heart at all, you will cry.

Instructions not Included is about an Acapulco playboy, whose life is one day interrupted by a woman claiming that he (Valentin) is the father of her now infant daughter. She asks Valentin to hold her daughter while she pays for the cab she took, and then never comes back. Through a series of events where Valentin tries to get Maggie (the baby) back to her mother, Valentin gets a job in Los Angeles as a stuntman and ends up raising Maggie. After a cute montage of Valentin teaching Maggie a bunch of things like how to walk and potty training, the movie flashes forward six years and he's established himself as a competent and loving father, with Maggie being his best friend. Valentin created an elaborate backstory to Maggie's mother about how she's this incredible adventurer instead of just telling Maggie that she dropped her on him without any warning. The conflict in this film, which isn't too hard to guess, is that Maggie's mother wants back into the picture, which turns out to be a lot more trouble to Valentin than he originally thought.

There isn't really much to say about this movie without ruining every good plot twists (there are approximately three that I can think of right now) however, I will say that the acting is really fun in this movie. Eugenio Derbez (Valentin) is really funny and fun to watch in this movie, and it's really fun to watch his character try to be a dad for the first little bit of Maggie's life when the movie established his character as such an incompetent person. The child actor, Loreto Peralta, who plays Maggie, was actually very good. She was cast very well, since she's blond and fair skinned, but she is fluent in Castilian and English. They have a really good dynamic between each other in this movie and the father/daughter relationship doesn't really seemed forced at all.
I really enjoyed the main conflict of the movie, which was: does Maggie's mother have the authority to assert herself back into Maggie's life after dumping her on Valentin and disappearing? I personally believe that in that situation, the mother really has no right to demand Maggie back, and my mom agreed with me. I could tell the movie had done a really good job of making the audience invest something in the characters and their relationships because when the mom comes in and threatens Valentin's and Maggie's whole life together, I was super angry at this person who didn't even want Maggie in the first place. It certainly isn't the best movie of all time, and the character development isn't the best of all time, but it's a good movie to just sit back, relax, and enjoy it.

Maybe I'm just buying in to the cheesy trope of a father who takes care of a little girl and they actually end up developing a great, loving relationship, but you know, I think I'm all right with that. It's a heartwarming movie that I would suggest you watch on a rainy Sunday afternoon in bed. Even though I think the ending is an interesting twist, and when you watch it a second time you can see it coming a mile away, it is a pretty low blow really only meant to tie up loose ends and make you cry. Overall, it's a sweet little movie that gave me a lot more than I was expecting.