IF opens with the Paramount logo reimagined as a child's drawing. "Cute," one might initially think... until the film continues to unspool. Then you realize that was but the first indication of writer/director John Krasinski's absolute desperation to whip up magic and whimsy and innocent whatnot. But no matter how urgently he struggles to force enchantment into existence, it never appears. Quite the opposite. Rarely does a film intended for family fun go so utterly wrong and feel so wildly miscalculated.
Movies about imaginary friends have almost universally been horror flicks or black comedies aimed at grownups, and there are good reasons for that. Either IF doesn't recognize how inherently accidently disturbing it is, or Krasinski imagines that he can world-build his way out of it. (Again, he fails at this.)
Here we have 12-year-old Bea (Cailey Fleming), who has come to stay with her grandmother (Fiona Shaw) while her father (Krasinski) is in the hospital for an unspecified surgery. This leaves Bea free — because Grandma certainly isn't keeping an eye on her — to pal around with Grandma's neighbor, Cal (Ryan Reynolds).
Bea discovers that she and Cal both see the imaginary friends that have been left behind when kids grow up — all manner of fantastical creatures. Not only that, but Cal's job is to try to find new kids for the IFs. It's a job he seems to hate... because in classic Ryan Reynolds style, he snarks and scoffs and sneers his way through the work. Bea learns about Cal's job when she (//checks notes) follows him through the streets of New York City one night and spies him (//checks notes again) breaking-and-entering a small child's bedroom window. It's all in the aid of fostering the creative power of a tender little one, doncha know.
The IF eager for a new kiddie placement in this case is a large purple fluffball, Blue (voiced by Steve Carell), who seems to be the love child of Monsters, Inc.'s Sulley and McDonald's Grimace. Other ready-made-for-toy-production-line CGI IFs include butterfly-like ballerina Blossom (voiced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge) and teddy bear Lewis (voiced by Louis Gossett Jr). In fact, all the IFs are voiced by a veritable parade of celebs: Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Jon Stewart, Sam Rockwell, Maya Rudolph and many more.
Bea teams up with Cal and spends an awful lot of time on her own with this strange man she just met, including traveling all over the city with him. Later, when the IF-matchmaking project evolves to try to reunite IFs with their now-grownups, Bea will follow another adult man into a public restroom as part of the job.
Sure, many kids' movies that are nothing but pure and wholesome could be spun to sound creepy. But this isn't really spinning it. So many awkward questions are raised by IF's scenario, and when answers come that might seem to deal with those questions, they feel like cheats.
IF's big problem is that it doesn't seem to know what it's about. Bea's mother dies of cancer in the film's opening sequence, and now Bea is worried about losing her dad. So we're supposed to see some sort of metaphor for dealing with grief? Except there are no metaphors here at all.
Occasionally, Bea — who is at least authentically charming — spouts fortune cookie–esque pabulum like "The most important stories are the ones we tell ourselves," but we never have any idea what it's supposed to mean. The wisdom she is seemingly developing about herself and life at large bears no evident connection to any of the increasingly bizarre f—ery we are subjected to. There's a sequence that's intended as a sort of flight of fancy, a loosening of Bea's imaginative powers, and while some of the animated moments within it are fleetingly striking, they don't hang together. And they certainly don't hang on the retro pop song it's set to: Tina Turner's 1984 raging feminist anthem, "Better Be Good to Me."
Only the most surface-level reading of the song could lead anyone to envision that the lyrics about demands for respect and accountability in a romantic and sexual relationship is translatable to kids and their imaginary friends. IF is less a flight of fancy than a jaw-droppingly terrible fever dream. ♦
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