In IF, 12-year-old Bea is at a difficult point in her life. Her father is in hospital, scheduled to have heart surgery, and she has moved in with her Grandma on a temporary basis.
On the first night in her new home, Bea leaves her Grandma’s apartment to walk down to the local shop. On her way back she sees a strange creature, which enters the apartment building.
The next day, Bea sees the creature again, only this time it is accompanied by a human man named Cal. She then discovers Cal works with the creature, and another like it, who are referred to as ‘IFs’ (imaginary friends).
The IFs used to belong to children, but when their respective kids grew up, they were essentially abandoned and left without a purpose. With the help of Bea, they work together to help other IFs in a similar position.
Written, directed, co-produced and starring John Krasinski, IF is a family fantasy comedy which is new to UK and US cinemas. The film features performances from Ryan Reynolds, Cailey Fleming, and Fiona Shaw, as well as vocal work from Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Steve Carell, and the late Louis Gossett Jr.
Aimed at families, and arriving at the beginning of the summer blockbuster season, IF has some of the right ingredients for an enjoyable piece of escapism. Should imaginative characters and old school sentiment be your thing, IF certainly has it in spades.
However, while IF ticks a couple of the right boxes and certainly has good intentions, it’s a mess of a movie. The film has a lot of ideas, and plenty of quirky characters, but it’s plodding stuff, which is likely to bore children senseless and cause parents to nod off into their popcorn.
If you’ve looked at the poster for IF, or watched the preview trailer and thought ‘this looks like a lot of hilarious fun’, then I’m afraid I have some bad news for you: It’s not quite the film you think it is. IF is not particularly humorous, it’s not much fun, and I’m not even sure it’s all that coherent.
The whole movie feels more like a collection of scenes that have been flung together, rather than a fully thought-out feature film. Somewhere between conception and completion things haven’t come together in the right way, and the end result is a hodge-podge of stuff and things.
The movie also doesn’t really know what to do with any of its cast. From the actors who appear on screen (Reynolds, Shaw), to the ones who provide voices (Waller-Bridge, Carell, and many famous names), everyone is completely wasted.
Reynolds comes off the worst, playing a melancholic version of his usual sarcastic persona. I imagine he signed up to the film willingly, but all the way through the picture it seems as if he is bored out of his brain, is being held hostage on set, and is ready to walk at any moment.
And if all the above wasn’t enough of a problem, IF also features a very annoying musical score from Michael Giacchino, which plinks and plonks and at times is SO DAMN IRRITATING. Ordinarily I wouldn’t even dwell on the music if I wasn’t a fan, but boy oh boy it is annoyingly twee.
On the plus side, IF looks good and features some beautiful cinematography from Janusz Kamiński (Saving Private Ryan, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, etc). The CGI work is solid too, and the film doesn’t drop the ball in this department.
If I was reviewing the film based purely on visuals alone, IF would get the ‘thumbs up’, as all of the ideas and imagination look great on screen. But as this review is so much more than what can be seen, and has to take into consideration pesky things such as the script etc, I’m afraid those thumbs will not be going vertical.
I really want to be complimentary about IF, because it is clear this film comes from a very good place, but I’m struggling. The final ten minutes are fine, and are suitably moving, but the rest is just a shambles, and an incredible slog to get through.
Will kids sit through this? Not on your nelly!
With the holidays on the horizon, IF will be hoping to do well at the box-office, but I just don’t see it happening. It won’t be because IF is in direct competition with new animated movie, Garfield, which will no doubt take a shed load of cash this summer, it’s because IF is simply not very good.
IF wants its audience to believe in the power of imaginary friends. Those same audiences would be better off imagining a better movie.
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