IF review: An unimaginative take on children’s imaginations

Children’s films are always positioned to memorialize the imaginative worlds in our heads, acting as shrines to those places that shrink as real life constricts us, growing more abrasive and demanding. On the surface, writer/director John Krasinski’s IF is destined to succeed in such an oversaturated arena; Bea (Cailey Fleming) is on the brink of teenagehood, spending a summer in New York while her Dad (Krasinski) undergoes an unspecified surgery. Gradually she encounters the mysterious Cal (Ryan Reynolds), who leads a troupe of CGI “IFs” (imaginary friends), who wander the city searching for the children who may prove their perfect match. Such a plot functions as an adept metaphor for the haunting loneliness of growing old, driving us further into the world and away from the rich potential of our own company. But IF feels markedly strung together, the consequence of its few creative ideas with no coherent visual language to bind them.

There is a moment midway through Joanna Hogg’s auto-fictitious The Souvenir Part II where the protagonist, Julie, must defend her student film. “I don’t want to show the world as it plays out,” she explains, “I want to show the world as I imagine it.” It is a smart and simple critical appraisal—an observation that can be reapplied to all film-watching experiences. It’s also a line that I kept mysteriously circling back to while watching IF. This story is explicitly about showing the world as it exists in someone’s head. Bea’s grandmother (Fiona Shaw) summarizes this in an early observation: “I could barely keep up with everything that went on in that little head of yours.” And yet, despite the resonant concept, IF is painstakingly anchored to the rules and logic of the real world.

Even in the computer-generated hall of the IF’s retirement center (a sentence that makes slightly more sense in the context of the film), everyone moves in ways reminiscent of grown-ups, bound by the physical limitations of old age. A red-tinted gummy bear perches on a wooden chair, a human-sized kitten sits hunched across from a boxy TV; rather than crafting a new, self-governing set of physical rules, Krasinski adheres to the “world as it plays out,” projecting his creation onto recognizable structures.

In Mel Stuart’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Gene Wilder’s Wonka lives in the candy-coated, alternate universe. The factory is expansive and colorful and the scrambled rules of this world are perfectly illustrated in his office, where everything—from clock, to desk, to typewriter—is cut in half. It is an elegant extension of this childlike atmosphere, where everyone is committed to maintaining an illogical order. It is clear that Ryan Reynolds is playing a Wonka-esque role in IF, an adult whose wacky sweetness grounds and propels the ridiculous plot. Unfortunately, Reynolds has crafted a career around self-aware snark, enacting a vernacular that replaces connection with quippy observations. It’s a tone that clings to the actor like a second skin, infecting his delivery and upending his conversations with these cutesy cartoons. Considering that Krasinski’s on-screen presence exudes a goofy earnestness (to an almost frustrating degree), the filmmaker would have been better served casting himself in this role.

But casting Reynolds as the misbegotten lead is indicative of IF’s central problem: It isn’t sure who it’s for. Krasinski is trying to craft a live-action Pixar film, offering audiences a story that balances comedy with moments of honest, everyday tragedy, effectively appealing to children and adults simultaneously. Ostensibly, Reynolds is the right choice to spearhead such a project; a grown-up movie star lending a children’s film some charisma. Yet, Pixar movies have a more complicated mix of ingredients setting them apart from the lower rung of all-ages entertainment, including their highly efficient control over their stories’ tones (think of the quietly tragic opening of Up, or the near silent first act of WALL-E). There is nothing efficient about IF. Scenes linger on and, right when they require an infusion of meaningful energy, (like a return to Bea’s charming dance number midway through), we are brought back to Bea’s Dad in the sterilized hospital room and his undisclosed illness, grinding the story to a strange, melancholic halt.

Every beat of IF is writ large, making for an unnatural viewing experience, one where charming moments are frustratingly loud, drowning out the film as a whole. Ultimately, the gap between the movie’s sparkling intention and its lackluster result is always felt, as wide and uncrossable as the gap between showing the world “as it plays out” and the world as it’s imagined.