IF

John Krasinski stepped away from the horror of A Quiet Place to bring the family friendly imagination on offer in IF, a film which the trailers suggested would be a whimsical and almost Roald Dahl-like adventure with Ryan Reynolds interacting with forgotten imaginary friends. However, the end result film is not entirely what the trailers suggested it would be…. but in a good way.

In an opening segment that gave me flashbacks of the emotional punch we opened with in Pixar’s Up, we are introduced to the early life of Cailey Fleming as Bea, a young girl whose mother lost the battle with cancer years earlier, and now her father is booked in to have heart surgery. When the now 12 year old Bea finds her mother’s old camcorder, she also starts seeing a curious creature, which turns out to be an imaginary creature named Blossom, who has been forgotten by her kid and now works with the somewhat grumpy Cal (Ryan Reynolds) in trying to find new homes for old imaginary friends. Bea begins trying to help, and finds herself drawn into a magical world of creatures, memories, and heartfelt emotions, all the while trying to reconcile her own emotions over her father’s upcoming surgery.

Less magical whimsy, and more emotional impact, the core focus in this film is the real world aspect of Bea and her father, and her grandmother (played wonderfully by Fiona Shaw) – that’s the actual story here, and whilst there are plenty of wonderfully imaginative moments with the IFs, especially a transformation of a retirement home for them that occurs, it never really feels that the larger idea of them is developed much until the closing act when they are used to open up emotions. The voice cast of the myriad of IFs that we see is stacked with names, some only offering a single line, but aside from a brief tour of the retirement home, we mainly stick with two IFs throughout.

The overall story is one that serves to remind us that sometimes we should turn to the comfort of our own childhood memories to aid us through times of stress and worry, and the importance of Reynolds’ character in the story is entirely signposted right from our first encounter with him. However, the film doesn’t quite feel like it taps entirely into its ambitious ideas, and does feel a little patchy at moments – especially when we are being granted the tour of the world of IFs, which just seems a little forced overall – but what it does do it hit the emotional core. There were three moments which had me with tears in my eyes, and by the end of the film I felt a warm glow inside as though my own imaginary friend had returned to offer me comfort.
Warm, enjoyable, visually beautiful, albeit a bit messy, IF feels like a throwback to childlike family adventures of yesteryear, even if it doesn’t entirely work.