Review: Children's fable 'IF' is loaded with invention, but never comes together as a cohesive story
There are a lot of nice little moments in “IF,” a children’s fable about a 12-year-old girl relearning how to embrace her childhood, but writer-director John Krasinski — laboring with the might of a dad trying to make his little girl happy — doesn’t build them up to anything bigger.
The premise of “IF” sounds like something out of a Pixar movie: What if all the imaginary friends — those various beings conjured up by children to fend off loneliness — got together and talked about their feelings? In that way, Krasinski, helming his first movie since the “A Quiet Place” films, gets quite inventive in showing us an array of creatures: A giant purple furball named Blue (voiced by Steve Carell, reuniting Krasinski with his boss from “The Office”), an English woman who resembles a ‘30s cartoon character names Blossom (voiced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge), a wise old teddy bear named Lewis (voiced by the late Louis Gossett Jr.), and so on.
The movie’s human protagonist is Bea, wonderfully played by Cailey Fleming, who’s been through a lot in her young life. In the opening montage — reminiscent of another Pixar movie, “Up” — we see Bea growing up with her loving parents (played by Krasinski and Catharine Daddario) in a New York apartment. The audience soon notices that Mom is wearing a kerchief on her head, and that the scenes have moved to a hospital room, and then Mom’s gone.
The action picks up with Bea, at 12, staying with her grandmother (Fiona Shaw) while Dad is in the hospital for an undisclosed surgery. Dad is a jokester, constantly trying to keep Bea’s spirits up by, for example, turning his IV rig into an impromptu dance partner. Bea is too serious for such frivolity, especially when she’s once again bringing flowers to her parent in a hospital.
One night, while Grandma is falling asleep watching an old movie (it’s “Harvey,” which is a big tipoff for those who know it), Bea hears something upstairs in the apartment building. She investigates, and finds Calvin (Ryan Reynolds), who we learn is the reluctant caregiver to all the imaginary friends who have been left behind when their kids grew up and forgot about them. Bea offers to help Calvin and the imaginary friends (or IFs for short) by either finding them new kids — like Benjamin (Alan Kim, from “Minari”), another patient in the hospital — or reuniting them with the adults who used to be their kids.
Much of “IF” is clever and creative — from the Coney Island setting for the IFs’ retirement home to the way needle drops are used to evoke memory — but after a while one realizes that they’re not really going anywhere. Krasinski has all the elements for a charming childhood fable, but can’t make the pieces fit into a satisfying whole.
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“IF”
★★1/2
Opens Friday, May 17, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for thematic elements and mild language. Running time: 104 minutes.