Two Is a Family

Two Is a Family (2016) opens on a man living comfortably in the south of France. One day a woman arrives at his door with a baby, tells him the child is his, and leaves. He goes to London to find her, fails, stays there and raises the child. The film is a remake of the Mexican picture Instructions Not Included, made in 2013 by Eugenio Derbez, which at the time had the highest gross of any Spanish language film in the United States. The French version moves the story to London. Omar Sy leads, in territory close to the warm comedy of Untouchable, though the film changes tone completely in its second half. Hugo Gélin directed. Gloria Colston plays the daughter, and the scenes between the two of them carry the film. It runs 118 minutes. Good for: French family comedy, stories about fathers and children, and Omar Sy. Less good for: the last act makes a heavy emotional turn that has not been prepared for, and it plays as manipulation. The mother is barely written, and the comic and dramatic halves feel like two different films.