John Krasinski’s new film IF has always been quite peculiar to me as I couldn’t get a handle on what this film is and who it is for. Now, so that people don’t think I’m being dense, but like is this a film primarily for kids, or is it a General Audiences type of picture? Now, after seeing it, I can say, at least to me, it’s mostly a kids movie. Now, in the screening I was in, there were a lot of kids, and the other critics I was with wondered if it worked as you didn’t hear the children mainly during the film. To me, that sounds like a good thing, as it feels like they were all captivated by what they were watching and weren’t bored and fidgeting around. As I watched it, I sat there and thought hmm, this is a good movie, but I’m not that interested in this. This isn’t for me in the slightest, and I think that’s a very good thing. I remember growing up and having movies specifically for me as a kid that weren’t animated. Films that weren’t putting The Fox and the Hound back in theaters. Things like The Wizard, The Monster Squad, and anything with Ernest P. Worrell in it. All those were prime kid movie-going experiences. And IF feels like one of those types of movies.
So IF is about a twelve-year-old girl named Bea, and she’s staying with her Grandmother in Brooklyn, New York, while her Father is about to have a serious medical procedure. What complicates that is Bea lost her mother when she was younger, so she acts like she needs to be a grown-up even as her Father tries to get her to lighten up. Things get weird when Bea starts seeing things in her Grandmother’s building and stumbles upon a giant purple furry creature named Blue, a butterfly woman named Blossom, and an exasperated man named Cal. Through them, she learns that Blue and Blossom are IFs or Imaginary Friends who no longer have their kids because those children grew up and forgot them. Bea decides to help Cal find new kids to partner with and become their imaginary friends. With her adventures helping them, Bea learns to reconnect with imagination and “kidness.”
Krasinski wrote and directed this film and did a good job of keeping the pace and not making this story too long. He also stars as the Father, and it was good to see him not be as serious as he has been since The Office ended. The tone is very light, and the CG characters interact very believably with the live-action settings and characters. The IF characters have adorable and familiar designs with incredible textures that look so tactile. You want to hug some of these characters. Cailey Fleming plays Bea and is great in her performance. She does well with showing the change in the character throughout the film from up tight to being a more well-rounded kid. Her scenes with Ryan Reynolds, who plays Cal, are sweet buddy comedy duo scenes. Reynolds is good in these kid movies as he knows how to play to his audience well. Fiona Shaw, who plays the Grandmother, is fun as the well-meaning Grandmother even if she’s not in the film that much. It’s just enough to help round out Bea’s life. I was happy to see Liza Colón-Zayas from The Bear here as Bea’s dad’s Nurse Janet. I think she’s great, and I was glad to see her in more stuff. Another child actor, Alan Kim, plays Benjamin, a kid in the hospital whom Bea befriends. He’s cute. That’s all.
There are a ton of cameo voices of the IFs that I’m not going to list since some of the fun is figuring them out. As I stated earlier, I really liked this film. It’s not something I plan to watch again, but this is definitely a film I’ll tell people with kids to take them to see this movie. IF is a fun children’s film with cute and inventive CG characters and good performances from all the live-action actors.
Score: B
RIOTUS 