dir. John Krasinski
Understanding that an ‘IF’ is an Imaginary Friend, it feels reasonable to assume that John Krasinski came up with the title and then tried to build a film around it. There certainly isn’t anything else which warrants this movie being made. Our twelve-year-old protagonist Bea is living with her grandmother while her father has surgery, and winds up being in touch with a huge fantasy world where imagination is king and IFs run free. It’s never really clear what she’s trying to do: there’s talk of bringing IFs, whose old children have forgotten about them, to new children (because IFs are immortal, or something), but this endeavour is swiftly unsuccessful. Then the focus is on bringing IFs to their original, now grown-up creators, which involves a lot of red glowing lights but then goes nowhere. Is it all about Bea coming to terms with her father’s operation? Well, her father (Krasinski) is so constantly upbeat and blithe, there never seems to be much tension there. A lot of the culmination is about Bea getting in touch with her own imaginary friend, but it doesn’t lead to any revelations or growth. The CGI for the IFs themselves is underwhelming at best, downright obnoxious at worst, because all the different styles manage to clash without ever truly looking unique or different. Half of them are absolutely absurd anyway – a bubble? An apple? A glass of water? A child really made an imaginary friend out of a glass of water? There are quips and stupid jokes galore, but there’s nothing funny enough to actually capture attention. In summary, IF meanders around never really aiming for anything. Honestly, by the time it ends, the audience feels far less inclined to childlike wonder than when they first went in.
BMDb 