IF

 This review may contain spoilers!

 

IF follows Bea, a young girl who lost her mother at a very young age and now has a lot of fear around losing her father as he prepares for heart surgery. However, when she stumbles upon a mysterious agency that reunites forgotten imaginary friends with their kids; Bea gets the chance to rediscover what it means to be a kid. 

 

This movie really hits hard with a few of the more dramatic emotional beats; it builds to key scenes very well. Just the simple human moments are what really shines in this big silly feature; instances like Jeremy finding his confidence as he reunites with Blue, Bea's Grandmother dancing as she did when she was young or her monologue about this and especially Bea crying and talking to her Dad after his operation.

 

While they always weren't used very well, I did really enjoy the designs for the IFs. They were so vibrant and varied, simplistic but with strong defining features. They felt like a menagerie that would tumble out of a child's imagination. The score is very sweet and charming, like reading a nostalgic fairytale if that feeling was woven into song. I also have to give a shout-out to the exquisite use of Tina Turner's 'Better Be Good To Me', which brought this real sense of cheer and joy to some important scenes. 

 

Cailey Fleming, who played Bea, is a young performer well worth looking out for as she starts landing more and more roles; Fleming's raw expression of grief in the final act of the film is one of the finest performance moments in the whole film. Ryan Reynolds, who played Cal, really takes you on the long haul with his role; this is a performance that really plays to the intent of the script, which pays off well in the end. John Krasinski, who played Dad, is entirely lovable in this film; his warm humour and playful presence really lift the spirits of his scenes. Steve Carell, who voiced Blue, is probably one of the most natural main voices for an imaginary friend; Carell really brings that happy-go-lucky yet entirely clueless gentle giant to life. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who voiced Blossom, is one of the more central imaginary friends who makes the most sense; she has a quiet loss for her kid and really feels like the glue holding things together. Alan Kim, who played Benjamin, is quite a sweet character; his onscreen friendship with Fleming is such a cute part of the whole feature. Bobby Moynihan, who played Jeremy, isn't a major role but has such an endearing sub-plot; watching Moynihan play such a stressed out character who finds his confidence in the end is a story arc I really enjoyed.

However, the best performance came from Fiona Shaw, who played the Grandmother. In a film that is so full of zany characters, voices and a nonsensical main storyline, I really enjoyed the quiet human moments where we snapped back to Bea and her grandmother. Shaw plays this woman who is feeling a bit worried and is trying her very best to make everything perfect for a granddaughter she doesn't fully understand. Her efforts are so sincere and heart-warming, even the moments that she gets wrong are done with such warmth and good intention. The scene in which she recounts her desire to grow up and be a dancer and how she met Bea's grandfather is textbook perfect acting. Her faraway voice, the way she is lost in the script herself, the yearning for that past and the love of what came from it - even the regret of what she didn't achieve. It's all there in a very short scene, but I'd go so far as to say it's one of the most important scenes in the film. Then later, when Shaw dances to the music her character danced to in her youth with a passion and a fondness that transcended everything else in the film, I was blown away. Fiona Shaw brought an unprecedented level of talent to this, and I'm so impressed.

This is by all accounts a family movie, in a lot of ways this is possibly one of the more straightforward genres to craft within. However, watching IF is like watching someone write their first picture book for children on a heavy, mature topic. The idea is a good one, but the message doesn't really reach the kids, and it's a bit too grown up; yet the antics throughout feel too silly for an adult to really buy into either. I really found the main issue with this movie was that it didn't know who it was trying to reach, there was a real lack of focus in how the narrative was delivered. The main storyline itself is overly complex, and the imaginary characters getting reunited with their kids felt convoluted most of the time. Bea really jumped from her 'too grown up' state to being totally on board with saving some imaginary friends in quite a sudden switch. Bea was often treated to some jarring character development, which made her a difficult character to really relate to. More than this, the IF storyline doesn't make all that much sense. The plot often contradicts whether the imaginary friends need to be reunited with their kids or if the whole thing is in Bea's imagination. Cal as a character is so perpetually frustrated that it means half of the protagonists don't really serve to drive the plot forward. The IFs are also used in odd ways tonally, sometimes the film unintentionally makes them quite scary and undercuts everything that is trying to be achieved in a scene.

This is a film that doesn't seem to know how it should shoot for characters that aren't physically present when shooting occurred. The framing and tracking of these computer generated creatures looks ugly constantly, and the film as a whole doesn't have much of a visually appealing palette.

Lewis Gossett Jr., Awkwafina, Emily Blunt, George Clooney, Bradley Cooper, Bill Hader, Richard Jenkins, Keegan-Michael Key, Sebastian Maniscalco, Christopher Meloni, Matthew Rhys, Sam Rockwell, Maya Rudolph, Amy Schumer and Jon Stewart, who voiced Lewis, Bubble, Unicorn, Spaceman, Ice, Banana, Art Teacher, Slime, Magician Mouse, Cosmo, Ghost, Guardian Dog, Alligator, Gummy Bear and Robot respectively, are a collective great example of why cameo and Easter egg culture don't always make a movie better; this collection of A-List voice performances are so lacking in personality that really an actual voice performer would have served these roles better.

A family movie that boasts a pretty phenomenal cast but seems lost and like it really has no sense of who exactly its audience is. I would give IF a 4/10.