Samuel is a man without attachments or responsibilities. That changes the day Kristin, a former fling, drops her three-month-old daughter Gloria into his arms and walks away. He can’t take care of her. He can’t afford to keep her. He doesn’t speak a word of English. So he gets on a plane to London, hoping to find Kristin and return Gloria to her mother.
That’s the setup for “Two Is a Family,” the 2016 French comedy-drama directed by Hugo Gélin, who also wrote the script with Mathieu Oullion and Jean-André Yerlès. It’s a remake of the Mexican film “Instructions Not Included,” and it follows Samuel and Gloria through eight years of shared life, stunt jobs, imaginary secret-agent mothers, and a courtroom battle over custody.
The film wants to be both a tender family story and a broad comedy. It can’t hold either position for long.
Trailer, via PalaceFilms.
Samuel and Gloria
Omar Sy plays Samuel as a runner, party-goer, and womanizer who suddenly finds himself responsible for a child. He’s charming, funny, and utterly unprepared. Gloria Colston plays Gloria as a bright, curious girl who bonds with her father completely. The relationship between the two is the film’s emotional core, and it’s the one thing that mostly works.
Sy brings warmth to Samuel’s chaos. He sells the panic, the jokes, and the genuine affection without ever letting the character feel fully competent. Gloria Colston is expressive and entirely convincing as a child who has never known her biological mother and has built a whole world around her father’s stories.
The problem is that the film keeps undercutting its own tenderness. Samuel tells Gloria that her mother is a secret agent who travels the world. He writes letters to her, sends gifts, and builds a whole mythology around her absence. That’s sweet. Then the film turns it into a lie, and the reveal is less a moment of truth than a cheap trick. The audience is led to believe Samuel has a terminal illness, only to have that turned into a joke later. The film keeps promising depth and delivering gags.
Kristin and the Courtroom
Clémence Poésy plays Kristin, Gloria’s biological mother, as a woman who shows up late, asks for custody, and triggers a fight over Gloria’s future. Antoine Bertrand plays Bernie, a Frenchman who works in the film industry and offers Samuel a stunt job. Ashley Walters plays Lowell, Kristin’s boyfriend. Clémentine Célarié plays Samantha, and Ruben Alves had a minor role.
The supporting cast is fine. Nobody is wasted. But the script keeps shifting its tone. One scene will be about Gloria’s love for her father, the next will be about a stunt gone wrong, and the next will be about a courtroom argument. The film can’t decide whether it’s a drama about abandonment or a comedy about a man who can’t speak English.
“Unable to take care of her, he embarks on a trip to London, in order to return Gloria to her mother.”
That line captures the film’s central confusion. Samuel takes Gloria to London because he can’t take care of her. He stays in London because he loves her. The film keeps circling this contradiction without landing anywhere.
Stuntman Work
Samuel works as a stuntman for eight years while raising Gloria. The film shows him performing stunts, though it doesn’t specify what those stunts involve beyond the stuntman job itself. These sequences are meant to be exciting. They’re not. They’re noisy, repetitive, and they break up the story’s momentum.
The stunt work is the film’s weakest element. It’s not dangerous, it’s not clever, and it doesn’t serve the plot. It’s padding. The film needs a reason for Samuel to stay in London for eight years, and the stunt job is supposed to be that reason. But the job itself is a black hole of exposition. We learn nothing about Samuel’s skills, his colleagues, or his work ethic. We just see him getting hurt and getting up.
Terminal Illness and DNA Test
The film’s biggest twist comes when Kristin requests a DNA test. It reveals that Samuel is not Gloria’s biological father. This is a genuine shock, and it changes everything. Suddenly the stakes are real. Samuel has raised a child he isn’t related to, and now he might lose her.
But the film doesn’t know what to do with this information. It spends a few minutes on the emotional fallout, then moves on to the next gag. The terminal illness that Bernie reveals near the end is a callback to an earlier scene. It’s meant to be a punchline, but it feels like a cheat. The film has spent an hour and a half building tension, and then it pulls the rug out twice in the final ten minutes.
Verdict
“Two Is a Family” is a film with a good heart and a bad sense of timing. It has a strong lead performance from Omar Sy, a remarkable young actress in Gloria Colston, and a premise that could support a moving drama. Instead, it becomes a scattergun of tones, jokes, and twists that never quite land.
The film is too long. At 118 minutes, it drags in the middle, particularly during the stunt sequences. The pacing is uneven. Some scenes fly by; others crawl. The comedy is hit-or-miss. The drama is thin. The ending is rushed.
None of this is to say the movie is a complete failure. There are moments of genuine warmth, and there are scenes where the bond between Samuel and Gloria feels real. But the overall effect is diluted. The film keeps undercutting its own emotional register, and that’s a fatal flaw.
This is a film that wanted to be several things at once. It wanted to be a comedy about a man who can’t speak English. It wanted to be a drama about a father-daughter bond. It wanted to be a thriller about a missing mother. It wanted to be a tearjerker about a terminal illness. It succeeded at none of them.
The result is a film that feels unfinished. It has a beginning, a middle, and an ending, but it never coheres into a single narrative. It’s a collection of scenes rather than a story. That’s a disappointment, because the raw materials were better than this.
“Two Is a Family” is a film that will appeal to some viewers and frustrate others. Those who enjoy broad physical comedy and sentimental family dramas may find something to like. Those who want a coherent, emotionally honest story will likely walk away disappointed.
The film is currently available for streaming. It’s worth a watch if you’re in the mood for a light-hearted, if inconsistent, viewing experience. But it’s not essential viewing, and it’s certainly not a masterpiece.
The score for “Two Is a Family” is 3.8 out of 10.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
