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Children Services provided advance screening of Mark Walhlberg movie about adoption
By Ed Runyan
NILES
About 50 people interested in foster parenting and adoption turned out at the Regal Cinema in Niles recently for the rare opportunity to see the advance screening of the Mark Wahlberg movie “Instant Family,” a comedy about adoption.
Stacy Ferencik, community liaison and recruitment specialist for Trumbull County Children Services, arranged the advance screening and invited people who had in the past expressed an interest in foster parenting or adoption. She also invited members of the Foster Adoptive Parent Association to participate in a “meet and greet” and answer questions.
Ferencik said she thinks the movie did a great job of showing people the realities of foster parenting or adoption in a way that might make people view it in a different light.
“We’re hoping the movie will be a tool to help people consider foster parenting,” she said. “I think a lot of people wouldn’t ever consider being a foster parent, but after seeing it on the big screen, they could picture themselves doing it.”
The film’s national release was Friday, including at the Regal Cinemas in Niles. Children Services staff was planning to again make themselves available at some of the showings to answer questions.
Ferencik said she even has hopes that she can talk Wahlberg into making an appearance here to talk about his passion for adoption, which he discussed in a recent interview with The Gospel Herald.
“I don’t think there was a dry eye in the theater,” Ferencik said of the screening. “The actors really got in tune with the character, the story line was really wonderful and not predictable,” she said.
The movie is about the real-life experiences of writer/director Sean Anders and his wife, Beth, in adopting three siblings in 2013.
In a promotional video for the movie on YouTube, Anders said there was a big adjustment for him and his wife when they adopted “because we went from zero kids to three kids literally overnight.”
He said much of what they went through was funny, so he decided to write a comedy about it.
“The idea isn’t for people to see the movie and run out and adopt kids. That would be wonderful, but I feel like when people have biological kids, it’s very, very easy to picture babies and Little League and graduation, and prom, but when people think about kids in foster care, they’re thinking ahead of all the sort of hard parts.”
He said the movie “does start with those hard parts, but it also shows what’s funny about those hard parts. Then it takes you through to when you become more of a family. And hopefully it will demystify all of that and you will realize they are just family, and that could be you and your kids and your family.”