IF movie review: a fantastical vibe in search of a story

IF — it spoils nothing to say that the title is an acronym for “imaginary friend” — opens with the Paramount logo reimagined as a child’s drawing. “Cute,” I thought… until the film continued to unspool and the realization dawned on me that that was but the first indication of writer-director John Krasinski’s absolute desperation to whip up magic and whimsy and innocent whatnot.

Spoiler: No matter how urgently he struggles to force enchantment into existence, it never appears. Quite the opposite. I’ve rarely seen a film intended for family fun go so utterly wrong and feel so wildly miscalculated.

Movies about imaginary friends have almost universally been aimed at adults, and are almost universally horror flicks or black comedies or both aimed at grownups, and there are good reasons for that. IF either doesn’t recognize how inherently accidentally disturbing it is, or Krasinski (A Quiet Place: Part II) imagines that he worldbuilds his way out of that. (Again, he fails at this.) Because here we have 12-year-old Bea (Cailey Fleming [Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker], who is at least authentically charming), who has come to stay with her grandmother (Fiona Shaw: The White King, Pixels) while her father (Krasinski) is in the hospital for an unspecified surgery that requires him to lounge around in a private room for many days before the operation, seemingly hanging out just for funsies. (The horror of such a hospital bill in America’s for-profit health-care dystopia is left to the mind’s eye and wallet.) This leaves Bea free — because Grandma certainly isn’t keeping an eye on her — to pal around with Grandma’s neighbor, Cal (Ryan Reynolds: Bullet Train, Free Guy).

The thing is, Bea discovers that not only can she and Cal both see the imaginary friends — all manner of fantastical CGI creatures — that have been left behind when kids grow up, but Cal’s job is to try to find new kids for the IFs. It’s a job he seems to hate and would prefer not to do… because, in classic Ryan Reynolds style, he snarks and scoffs and sneers his way through the work. Bea learns about Cal’s job when she *checks notes* follows him through the streets of New York City one night and spies him *checks notes again* breaking-and-entering a small child’s bedroom window. It’s all in the aid of fostering the creative power of a tender little one, doncha know.

(The IF eager for a new kiddie placement is a large purple fluffball, Blue [the voice of Steve Carell: Irresistible, Welcome to Marwen], who seems to be the love child of Monsters, Inc.’s Sulley and McDonald’s fast-food mascot Grimace. Other ready-made-for-toy-production-line IFs include butterfly-like ballerina Blossom [the voice of Phoebe Waller-Bridge: Solo: A Star Wars Story, Man Up] and teddy bear Lewis [the voice of Louis Gossett Jr]. All the IFs are voiced by a veritable parade of spot-the-celebs: Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Jon Stewart, Sam Rockwell, Maya Rudolph, and many more.)

Bea teams up with Cal and spends an awful lot of time on her own with this strange man she just met, including traveling all over the city with him. Later, when the IF-matchmaking project evolves to try to reunite IFs with their now-grownups, Bea will follow another adult man into a public restroom as part of the job.

I mean, sure, probably many kids’ movies that are nothing but pure and wholesome could be spun to sound creepy. But I’m not really spinning it. So many awkward questions are raised by the scenario I have straightforwardly described, and when answers come that might seem to deal with those questions, they feel like cheats at best.

The big problem with IF is that it doesn’t seem to know what it’s about. Bea’s mother died of gauzy cancer porn in the film’s opening sequence, and now she’s worried about losing her dad, of course, so I guess we’re supposed to see some sort of metaphor for dealing with grief? Except I don’t see any metaphors here at all. (Someone asks Bea what her name is short for, and she says, nothing. Her mom just randomly started calling her Bea one day. That could be the big IF metaphor.)

Krasinski’s real world is clearly aiming for the charm of a slightly heightened reality and a sense of timelessness: the vintage tinge to Bea’s and Cal’s clothing, the cluttered chic of Grandma’s impossible Brooklyn brownstone. (Truly lovely work here from production designer Jess Gonchor [Little Women, Hail, Caesar!] and costume designer Jenny Eagan [Knives Out, Widows].) But it’s a vibe in search of a story. Occasionally, Bea spouts fortune cookie–esque pabulum like “The most important stories are the ones we tell ourselves,” but we never have any idea what it’s supposed to mean. (What story has she been telling herself?) The wisdom she is seemingly developing about herself and life at large bears no evident connection to any of the increasingly bizarre fuckery we are subjected to.

There’s a sequence that’s intended as a sort of flight of fancy, a loosening of Bea’s imaginative powers, and while some of the animated moments within it are fleetingly striking, they don’t hang together, and they certainly don’t hang on the retro pop song it’s set to: Tina Turner’s 1984 raging feminist anthem “Better Be Good to Me.” Only via of the most surface-level reading of its lyrics would anyone envision that its demands for respect and accountability in a romantic and sexual relationship is translatable to kids and their imaginary friends. It’s less a flight of fancy than a jaw-droppingly terrible fever dream.

more films like this:
• Inside Out [Prime US | Prime UK | Apple TV US | Apple TV UK | Disney+]
• A Monster Calls [Prime US | Prime UK | Apple TV US | Apple TV UK]