There’s an existential question at the heart of writer/director John Krasinski’s new kid-friendly semi-animated movie “IF.” It’s a simple query, but it speaks to the limitless potential of a child’s imagination, and it gets asked again and again: “What if?”
“IF” is also an acronym in the film for “imaginary friend,” and so the question is asking, “What imaginary friend?” But it’s also spurring the audience to consider the possibilities that seem impossible, like if our imaginary friends never disappear with time and memory, but remain in the world, purposeless and friendless.
It’s an interesting premise, and Krasinski has leveraged his hefty Hollywood contacts list to contribute voices to the imaginary friends. However, a cute plot and a bunch of stars are pretty much the only things going for “IF,” which is a surprisingly somber film with serious storytelling problems, because writer Krasinski didn’t bother to flesh out the fantastical world-building.
It’s a bit ironic because the characters repeatedly talk about the importance of stories.
In an opening narration, our heroine Bea (Cailey Fleming) describes how when she was a child, her mother would ask for a story, and later, she tells a story to her father (Krasinski) in one of the film’s climactic, cathartic moments. Krasinski insists that stories are important, but never actually demonstrates why or how. And on a structural level, the storytelling of “IF” itself is a mess, a heartfelt but dramatically inert endeavor that whipsaws between tones ranging from whimsical to morose.
This may be a film about imaginary friends, but what it’s actually about is dead and dying parents. The IFs are the coping mechanism, and they are also the emotional tether to childlike wonder and comfort in escapism, which is something that 12-year-old Bea needs more than ever.
In an opening montage, we see her happy childhood, and her mother (Catharine Daddario) slipping away due to illness. When we meet Bea again in the present, her father is in the hospital with a “broken heart” (though he’s plenty spry enough to pull childish pranks and high jinks).
Bea is staying with her grandmother (Fiona Shaw) in her childhood apartment in New York City, strangely left to her own devices, and ends up finding a friend in with her reticent neighbor Cal (Ryan Reynolds) and his two magical associates, a giant purple guy named Blue (voiced Steve Carell) and a ballerina Minnie Mouse creature, Blossom (voiced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge).
