I confess I was kind of avoiding IF, the new family movie from John Krasinski. I was unable to make it to a press screening before it debuted last month, and its disastrous opening weekend and critical drubbing made me think that perhaps I’d dodged a bullet. The trailers made it look like the kind of forced whimsy/madcap kiddie comedy that usually sends me racing for the Advil, and with Deadpool and Wolverine opening in July, I knew I would be pushing my yearly tolerance levels for Ryan Reynolds' brand of snark.
I even gave my daughter a list of choices for our big daddy-daughter day. I knew she wanted to eat lunch at Rainforest Cafe, which was at a mall about 45 minutes from our house, so I gave her the options of LegoLand, Peppa Pig World or an aquarium, all of which are located on site. But Cece knew there was also a movie theater at the mall, and she had been hinting that she really wanted to see IF for a few weeks; she even asked about it the week prior, when we sat down to see Inside Out 2.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. While my son likes movies, he gravitates more toward sports. Cece, however, is my movie nerd. She loves to tell me when she’s seen an “Easter egg” in a Pixar movie and has a knack for picking up emotional subtext in a movie. She’s also a deeply imaginative kid, constantly writing little stories and coming up with her own ideas for movies; one summer, she also hosted a YouTube show – not on YouTube, but in the mirror – called “Cece’s Imagination.” It’s not surprising she was interested in a movie about imaginary friends.
I’ve written a bit before about whether seeing movies with my kids changes how I approach the films. Would I have enjoyed Godzilla X Kong as much if it hadn’t been a last-minute Friday night choice where I sat beside my son and daughter cheering on the Saturday morning cartoon stupidity? I don’t automatically go easy on a film if I see it with my kids – there are several animated movies and Marvel adventures that I’ve had to smile about as they’re raving in the car afterward, knowing full well I’m going to excoriate it on this site later. But I think sitting with my kids and trying to approach a film from their perspectives helps me rein in some of the harsher impulses I might have if I were at a screening, particularly for a movie not aimed at me. And sometimes, it opens me up more to a movie that I might have gone into with my hackles up.
And so, I was surprised to find myself not only enjoying IF, but kind of loving it. That’s not to say it’s a masterpiece or that it isn’t flawed. But I greatly appreciated its earnestness and moments of beauty. Despite featuring voice cameos by more than a dozen big-name movie stars, it’s not another hyperactive joke-a-minute kids’ movie. It’s thoughtful and sad when it needs to be, but never in a way that squelches the whimsy. Krasinski is aiming for Spielberg territory, and while he doesn’t quite get there, there are several moments in which he comes close.
Meet the IFs
In the film’s opening credits, we get glimpses of young Bea growing up in a house in New York, surrounded by parents who encourage her to use her imagination as an escape her from the fact that her mother is dying of cancer (Krasinski portrays this gently, with a few fleeting shots of a hospital room and the mother wearing a kerchief around her head; my daughter picked up what was happening right away). Years later, a 12-year-old Bea (Cailey Fleming) returns to the home to stay with her grandmother (Fiona Shaw) as her father (Krasinski) is hospitalized while he awaits surgery.
Bea has long since abandoned her more playful side to accept life’s harder realities and prides herself on no longer being a kid, although the fact that she sneaks away to view old family movies on the camcorder proves that she might not be as grown up as she thinks. One night, on the way back from the store, she discovers a strange creature outside her home. This is Blossom (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), who looks like a flapper with butterfly wings. She lives upstairs in Bea’s building, alongside Blue (Steve Carell), a fuzzy, clumsy, purple thing. They’re imaginary friends, being taken care of by Cal (Ryan Reynolds), a surly man who begrudgingly lets Bea into their world.
Cal and the gang quickly fill Bea in on the world of imaginary friends, which prefer to be known as IFs. IFs are created by children as they grow up; but when they mature and put aside childish things like wonder and imagination, the IFs are left behind, wandering the city or taking refuge in a retirement home under Coney Island. Cal has attempted to find homes for the IFs and pair them with children in need of imaginary friends, but it’s been largely a failure. Bea agrees to help them and, in the process, finds her own childhood joy returning.
Many critics pointed out how the world of the IFs and the plot of the movie itself is a mess. And I can’t argue with them. The screenplay (written by Krasinski) doesn’t seem too concerned with creating any rules for the imaginary friends. Are there centuries’ worth of them roaming New York – or even the world? What happens when their child hits old age and dies – does the IF die? Are kids still creating new imaginary friends and, if not, why? There’s not even really a reason why Bea can suddenly see every IF in New York and no other kid can; it’s implied that a person will only see an IF they personally connect with…does Bea have some super imagination? And what’s the deal with her father, who is in the hospital but doesn’t seem particularly ill? He hangs out in his room all day in his street clothes and has enough energy to do a soft-shoe dance with his IV pole and fake an escape. The only explanation given is that he needs surgery to repair “a broken heart,” …which, yes, I can understand, would cause eye rolls.
But here’s the thing: I don’t care about any of that. And not in a “it’s flawed, but because I enjoyed it, it’s good actually” kind of way. Yes, the film is messy and the story is sprawling. But if the film went to pains to craft an airtight mythology and tie everything up in clean bows, it would defeat what makes it special.
IF operates largely on child logic, to the point where if you told me Krasinski simply transcribed a story his kids made up, I would believe you. Kids’ imaginations are rambling, sprawling, nonsensical places, and so I don’t need this world to make sense like, say, a science fiction movie or hard fantasy. I can roll with it because even if it makes little logical sense, it feels emotionally true. Likewise, even if the specifics of the father’s illness don’t make sense, the only thing the film needs to establish is that Bea’s father is sick and it makes her afraid. More explanations might satisfy adults but dilute the emotional impact for kids; I raised my eyebrow when the “broken heart” line came up, but my daughter immediately understood and invested in the emotional situation.
Big voices, bigger emotions
I’m sure that a major selling point when Krasinski pitched the film was the opportunity for him to re-team with his old Office mate Carell and populate the movie with big names to voice the IFs. I envisioned a sugared-up joke fest leaning on pop culture references and characters loosely based on their famous voices. But aside from one montage, in which Bea interviews the IFs to place them with a child, the film doesn’t really go wild with antics. Yes, you can pick up the voices of Jon Stewart, Amy Schumer and a few other celebrities, but the film’s humor is often gentler and less hyperactive than you’d expect. Only a few of the IFs brim with the manic desperation a lesser film might turn to for laughs; Krasinski uses most of his voice actors to create wistful characters who have had to watch as their closest friend forgot about them. Krasinski has obviously watched a lot of Pixar films, and IF has a lot of Toy Story in its DNA. I particularly like Carrell’s clumsy vulnerability as Blue and the gentle melancholy Louis Gossett Jr. shows in his final role as Lewis, the quiet old bear who runs the retirement home for IFs.
Ryan Reynolds is an actor who I often struggle with, largely because he only plays Ryan Reynolds, a snarky wiseass. He’s most successful when he uses sarcasm as a defense mechanism; the secret sauce of the Deadpool movies is that behind the meta motormouth is a character with a broken heart who cares deeply for his friends. At times, Cal feels like another caustic Reynolds character, but the film lets us know early on that it’s because he’s been wounded and let down by people; there’s a “twist” about his character revealed in the end that I’m sure attentive viewers will pick up on by the end of the first act, and I wish Krasinski had been open about it from the start. Reynolds is still too fond of undercutting sincerity with a joke, a tendency that hurts the film’s climactic emotional moment, but when he’s willing to play sincere, the warmth under the wit feels genuine.
I really like Krasinski’s two Quiet Place movies, particularly the first (I’ll have a review of the third movie – not directed by Krasinski – on Friday). In those films’ suspense sequences, he revealed himself to be a more than competent craftsman. But more importantly was how Krasinski handled the film’s emotional moments and the relationships between the characters. A Quiet Place works not because it’s scary – although it is – but because Krasinski delivers a scary movie all about the fraught and terrifying work of parenting, and the strength of family love. It works because it’s about the fear of raising kids in a world where every single thing has the power to kill them, and about that fact that it’s so fulfilling and meaningful, we’ll do it anyway.
IF largely works because of that same earnestness. The film doesn’t feel prepackaged or calculated; Krasinski sincerely wants to both the heartbreak of children being forced to stop being kids too early as well as the aching adults have to reconnect with that lost innocence, especially when the pressures of being grown up feel too much to bear. Much of the film’s back half focuses not on connecting the IFs with kids but with bringing them back in touch with their original children. And those who might be allergic to sentimentality might snicker, but I found this to be deeply touching and affecting because the film never plays the sequences as gags or hijinks but lets the film rest in emotional truth. It’s sincere, poignant and sad – without being depressing or too dark for families – in a way that kids’ movies, which too often have to uphold a brand or IP, are no longer allowed to be.
Not quite Spielberg
Krasinski, as I said earlier, is aiming for Spielberg here, going so far as to hire Janusz Kaminski as his cinematographer. And while Krasinski lacks Spielberg’s effortlessness, IF has moments that feel like they come close to delivering the mixture of innocence and wonder that fueled movies like Close Encounters and E.T. Michael Giacchino's beautiful score does a lot of emotional heavy lifting, and the film gains a lot from the tactile and innovative looks for the IFs. Blue’s fur seems like I could reach out and touch it, and the designs of imaginary friends are designed to look like robots, puppies, flowers and bears, but always in a way that captures the tenderness and vividness of a child’s imagination, not photorealism.
Krasinski works well with his young lead, and he brings a deft, playful hand to the film. An extended sequence where Bea lets her imagination run wild and transform the IF retirement home is energetic, fun and unpredictable, culminating in the rare family movie dance party that feels earned. A later scene in which Bea’s grandmother dances to Spartacus: Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygi in her apartment, unaware her long-lost imaginary friend is dancing alongside her, is particularly arresting. Krasinski sometimes seems to be trying too hard and at times loses the balance between when the film should lean on humor or sentiment, but for the most part, it works.
In his defense of the film, Matt Zoller Seitz discusses how, in his theater, different audience members could be heard crying at completely different moments in the film. My daughter and I were the only people in our theater early that Saturday morning, but we both found ourselves choked up at different moments. For Cece, it was the most emotionally fraught moments where Bea dealt with the potential loss of her parents. For me, it was a moment with Bobby Moynihan as an anxiety-plagued worker who finds his calm only when his IF lays a comforting hand on his shoulder. I also laughed at the film’s energy and cared about whether the characters – real and imaginary – found what they were searching for.
No, IF is not a perfect film, and I can understand why it bounced off many. But I find myself thinking back on it quite a bit, and while it’s tempting to say I love it in spite of its mistakes, I think the truth is that its messiness is part of why I love it. In a world where children’s films are little more than brand deposits – especially as I stare down the barrel of seeing a fourth Despicable Me next week – I love films that take children’s anxieties, hopes and joys seriously. I’m glad Pixar made Inside Out 2. And I’m grateful that John Krasinski wrote something that feels original and imaginative, and that takes the interior life of its young audience seriously. We don’t get many movies like this; I’m thankful IF exists.