In an attempt to keep up with the current documentary slate, but still catching up with older titles we present this review of the first HBO documentary for 2025.
OVERVIEW: The HBO Original three-part documentary series AN UPDATE ON OUR FAMILY, directed by Rachel Mason, debuted Wednesday, 15 and each Wednesday through 01.29.25. It explores the complex world of family vlogging – a popular and potentially lucrative phenomenon in which parents post a steady stream of lifestyle videos on their social media channels to be consumed by loyal subscribers. The content often cultivates a sense of community and attachment for devoted viewers and can generate income for the vloggers. Through the lens of one family’s story and the sudden online disappearance of their adopted son, the series raises questions about what motivates vloggers to expose their home lives to the world and examines the wider issues that emerge when parents make their family life public.
Inspired by a New York Magazine article by Caitlin Moscatello, the series presents vloggers Myka and James Stauffer. Part of their video journal for mass consumption included the adoption of a two-and-a-half-year-old boy from China, and his subsequent treatment and later absence online as well as backlash towards the family as a result. Here is what happened.
EXPECTATIONS: Already without seeing a cinematic image from this documentary series I have a huge chip on my shoulder. Just by reading its description alone, I am turned off. Turned off not by the director Rachel Mason’s work itself but by the subject matter. I can’t stand vlogging culture, to the point of it not being played in my household.
Now I realize people need to populate the internet and that there are plenty of legitimate jobs on it, but the vloggers are not of that category in my opinion. They, and those called influencers as well, are lazy-ass people who think they are so cool and above everybody else, who think their lives are more interesting than everybody else. They are too pathetic to get real worthwhile jobs and contribute to society meaningfully. They are shallow and just want fame and money the easy way and I have no tolerance for them.
So, here I am facing a documentary about them. They are not going to win me over, especially this couple who appear to monetize their family and manipulate it to achieve a likable status. I will suffer and cringe my way through the history of vlogging to get to the real root of the documentary. First a quick run of the trailer and then let’s go.
GUT REACTION: This is a 3-parter and Episode I, entitled “Welcome To Our Party” already left me disgusted. This hour is dedicated to the history & craft of vlogging and how the Stauffers quickly excelled at it. They successfully got sponsorship and got caught in the trap of always making excitable content to keep the money coming. I get the initial reasoning behind vlogging. Through the decades we’ve gone from polaroids and slides to home homies and now those home movies, chronicling our lives, are on the internet. I get it. But the blatant monetizing of dime-a-dozen experiences rubs me wrong. Equally irritating are the followers who are addicted to this stuff, clicking more content. To keep their enterprise going the Stauffers opt to adopt.
Episode 2, entitled “Damn Good Mom”, follows the Stauffer’s journey as they head towards adoption. To me it is already obvious; it is because they needed bigger bolder content to keep this cushy job going. I acknowledge that the background information had to happen, but I was not truly invested until Huxley came on the scene. May I interject, what a smart, caring move for the filmmaker to blur out Huxley’s image (and the faces of the Stauffer children) throughout. Anyway, I appreciated that adoption counselor Cameron Lee Small came on. The crux of this isn’t the vlogging trap but the lack of justice for an innocent adopted child.
Clearly, not only did the Stauffers monetize this child, but abandoned him when the situation turned ugly for the Stauffers. But followers begin to pick up on Huxley’s sudden absence, missing the child’s car seat for one, but then Huxley’s content begins to be purged. It’s as if the Stauffers said, “Oh, this content direction we took is too troubling let’s just scrap it!” Repulsive.
Episode 3 is titled “Where’s Huxley?” in which the backlash that surfaced is explored, what it meant for the Stauffer family, and what sense of closure, if any, the situation gives us, them & especially Huxley. Apparently, under the scrutiny of thousands of their subscribers, the Stauffers were seeing a backlash. Huxley’s presence, the main focus now of that subscriber base, was purged. Daily videos of him and all references to him dropped. Eventually, the Stauffers offered an explanation for his absence. The picture above is of that announcement. They were both crying about the rehousing of Huxley but by then their audience wasn’t buying it. They saw it now as manipulation and showboating of their audience; their act was not deemed sincere.
The vitriol used towards the Stauffers is off-putting, but the film had to display the genuine anger and disgust subscribers had towards the family. It was called out that Huxley had his hand duck taped, so he wouldn’t suck his thumb, that daily timeouts were issued to a child that clearly was not in control of much of his behavior, and that his “mother” could not afford speech therapy for him though she was filmed in a highly upgraded home and expensive Cartier jewelry. It really started to hurt them then, when mainstream 
media picked up on their issue (a Buzzfeed columnist, Stephanie McNeal gets screen time to talk about that) and sponsors began to quickly fall away. Luckily, the Stauffer internet family began to fall away also, but only after Huxley’s been mistreated.
To help chronicle the whole incident from beginning to end were willing participants like avid Stauffer subscriber Hannah Cho (pictured), also an adoptee who was quite beneficial in putting all this into perspective; vlogger Channon Rose; social media expert Sophie Ross and others. Note: Myka and James Stauffer refused to be interviewed to add new content to the film.
IN CONCLUSION: You have to take the good with the bad. Though I don’t care for family vlogging, I was invested in what happened to Huxley. Plus, I’ve got to say that it is a good thing that all those subscribers were watchdogs championing what was right, though death threats and such were too much.
I hope people watch this mostly to become aware that adoption is no game – we are talking about precious lives. But the most likely takeaway may just be about the manipulations and acting that may go on in these types of videos. It’s a racket and at least one family has been reprimanded for it. AN UPDATE ON MY FAMILY is worth a look so we learn those lessons…and continue to hope for Huxley in a worthy forever home!
AN UPDATE ON MY FAMILY is now on HBO and streaming on Max.
