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.

Review: 'Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes' is a slow burn, but it ignites into strong sci-fi and a solid allegory about power

It takes a while to grow on you, but “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” eventually emerges as an intelligent and moving entry in the durable science-fiction franchise.

The movie starts with the death of the character the franchise has been following for years, the ape leader Caesar. He’s given a funeral fit for a king, which is what he was when we saw him seven years ago, in “War for the Planet of the Apes.”

The movie then jumps forward “many generations later,” a title card tells us, and shows us a world where the skyscrapers of the human race are rusted and overgrown with vegetation — and the climbing grounds for the current inhabitants, the apes. We’re introduced to the Eagle Clan, whose members train birds of prey to serve them. For young adults, it has become a coming-of-age ritual to pilfer an egg from the eagles’ nests and care for the resulting chick. For Noa (performed by Owen Teague), there’s added pressure because his father is the clan’s “master of birds.”

But there are others who pose a danger to the Eagle Clan — namely the gorillas, and their ruler, Proximus (performed by Kevin Durand), who are working to enslave all the smaller apes for his grand purpose. When the gorillas attack and enslave the Eagle Clan, Noa vows to free them, and gets on his horse to find where Proximus’ forces have taken them.

On his journey, Noa makes two allies. One is Raka (performed by Peter Macon), an orangutan who is the last member of the Order of Caesar, who devoted their lives to the teaching of their great leader — and who believe tyrants like Proximus are misusing Caesar’s name in their quest for power. The other is a human woman (Freya Allan), who has been following Noa from a distance, apparently hungry and freezing. 

Raka intuits that the woman — whom he calls Nova (“i call all of them Nova,” he says,a sly nod to the franchise’s history of women characters — is smarter than most humans, who mostly have turned mute and feral over the decades.

What happens from this point on is definitely in spoiler territory — and also genuinely cool, so I don’t want anyone to lose out on experiencing the surprise my fellow audience members felt watching it all unfold. I will say there’s an actor whose late-in-the-game appearance made me smile broadly.

Director Wes Ball (who made the three “Maze Runner” movies) and screenwriter Josh Friedman perform some stunning acts of world-building, creating varied ape communities in the ruins left behind by humanity. (Friedman knows a thing or two about world-building, having worked with James Cameron on the “Avatar” movies.) The performance-capture work is seamless, propelling the illusion that they got actual apes — not just computer-animated faces manipulated by human actors — to emote and fight through these scenes.

It does take a few minutes for our human brains — and in this universe, humans are in cognitive decline — to sort out which character is which. Once a viewer gets over that threshold, “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” reveals itself to be a stirring piece of science fiction, as well as a deft allegory about the dangers of power and the conundrum of knowing who to trust. 

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‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, May 10, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence/action. Running time: 145 minutes.

Review: 'The Fall Guy' is a fun meta-homage to stunt performers, and a showcase for the onscreen chemistry between Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt

Among the many ways director David Leitch’s fizzy action rom-com “The Fall Guy” pays tribute to the work of Hollywood’s stunt community is its very structure — by making something that’s intricately thought out in every detail look effortlessly tossed out there for our entertainment.

Verrrry loosely inspired by the ‘80s TV series starring Lee Majors, “The Fall Guy” centers on Colt Seavers (played by Ryan Gosling), a veteran stunt performer whose steady gig for the last six years has been as stunt double for one of Hollywood’s biggest and most arrogant stars, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). 

That ends when Colt is injured on a stunt — a long fall in a hotel foyer that Leitch seems to carry off in one unbroken take, with Gosling is doing the falling. However, as the movie teaches us later, the latest technology is “deep fakes,” in which the star’s head can be transposed onto the stunt performer’s body. It’s just the first of many examples of how screenwriter Drew Pearce (“Iron Man 3,” “Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation”) anticipates everything we think we know about moviemaking — specifically, making an action blockbuster — and toys with those ideas.

Before his fall, Colt was well into a wonderfully romantic interlude with one of the film’s camera operators, Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt). After the fall, though, Colt withdraws from the industry, the world, and Jody — and 18 months later is parking cars at a Mexican restaurant in L.A.

Then Colt gets a call from Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham), the hard-charging producer of Ryder’s films. Gail tells Colt she needs him to perform some stunts on Ryder’s current shoot, an action-packed science-fiction love story being filmed in Australia. Colt declines, until Gail tells him that the director is Jody, who specifically asked for him to work on her first film as a director.

Colt arrives, reteaming with stunt coordinator Dan Tucker (Winston Duke), and soon learns that Gail was lying — Jody didn’t know he was coming, and doesn’t want him on her set. Seems that Jody is still nursing some pain over their abrupt break-up. But before they can resolve those issues, Gail delivers Colt some disturbing news: Ryder has gone missing, and she needs Colt to find him before Jody and the studio find out.

This mission sets Colt off on a pursuit of the spoiled actor, and a line of clues — and, this being an action movie, a series of breakneck stunt pieces in which Colt (or, more accurately, Gosling’s stunt double) is shot at, punched, tossed around, dragged behind vehicles, thrown through windshields and put through other death-defying events.

Leitch (“Deadpool 2,” “Atomic Blonde,” “Bullet Train”) was a stunt man and stunt coordinator before he became a director, and it’s abundantly clear in this film how much he loves the stunt community and the crazy things they do for our entertainment. (Yes, there’s a none-too-subtle mention of how stunt performers don’t have a category at the Oscars.) He shows us the sweat and precision that goes into creating such stunts, without detracting from how fun they are to watch onscreen.

What burns even brighter than the movie’s pyrotechnics is the movie chemistry between Gosling and Blunt. We’ve had hints of their shared appeal recently, in their joint appearances on the Academy Awards and “Saturday Night Live.” Here, the combination is perfection, producing both comedic and romantic sparks. (To be fair, I’d love to see a rom-com starring the actors’ real-life spouses, Eva Mendes and John Krasinski, just to balance things.)

“The Fall Guy” works because the stars, like the action pieces, are giving their all without looking like they’re trying too hard. It’s as much a balancing act as any stunt in the movie, and the results are breathtaking.

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‘The Fall Guy’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, May 3, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for action and violence, drug content and some strong language. Running time: 126 minutes.

Review: 'The Idea of You' elevates the romantic drama, with Anne Hathaway radiant as a single mom in a surprising relationship with a young pop star

The swoon-worthy drama “The Idea of You” performs a double service by reminding viewers of the intrinsic value of two much-maligned aspects of the movies: Anne Hathaway and the very notion of romantic movies for grownups.

Hathaway, who’s one of the movie’s producers, stars as Solène Marchand, an art gallery owner in Los Angeles’ Silverlake neighborhood, living with her 16-year-old daughter, Izzy (Ella Rubin). Solène is looking forward to a solo camping trip while her ex, Daniel (Reid Scott), takes Izzy and her friends to Coachella for a VIP meet-and-greet with the boy band August Moon. But when Daniel flakes out, Solène suddenly has to chaperone Izzy instead.

While chilling in the VIP area, Solène goes looking for a bathroom — and ends up accidentally in the trailer of August Moon’s charming lead singer, Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine). It’s an awkward meet-cute, but it’s hard to ignore the sparks flying between them. For Hayes, it’s a rare instance where he’s meeting a woman who isn’t a fawning fangirl. Solène, on the other hand, intuits that there’s more to Hayes than good looks and a charming English accent.

So it shouldn’t be that much of a surprise when Hayes shows up at Solène’s gallery and offers to buy every item on display. Solène stands up to that rich-boy arrogance, and speaks eloquently of the labor and thought that her artists expended to create these works. Hayes wants to see more art, so Solène takes him to the studio of one of her artist friends — sneaking him out of the neighborhood through the paparazzi and August Moon fans who amass wherever he’s spotted.

It doesn’t take long before the two are kissing. Not long after that – after Solène conveniently drops Izzy off at summer camp — Hayes invites her to New York, where they spend a day or two in a hotel having some excellent sex. (Or so we assume. The bedroom scenes are tastefully shot, and usually cut away before anything that would scare the Prime Video viewers.) By the end of the weekend, Hayes invites Solène to join the band on their European tour, and she says yes.

Director Michael Showalter (“The Big Sick”) and co-screenwriter Jennifer Westfeldt (“Kissing Jessica Stein”), in adapting Robinne Lee’s novel, find more meat than is typical in modern romance movies. The script tries to tackle some hard emotional issues — about divorce, trust issues, the choice to lean into a new love, and both characters’ reluctance to open up about what they’re really feeling — and does so with intelligence and a full heart. Only in the last half hour do the plot mechanics kick in, with Solène and Hayes dealing with the reality of the entire internet learning of their relationship.

Galitzine is definitely a charmer, and digs into a character who’s broader and deeper than the boy-band stereotype. And, as those who saw him as Camila Cabello’s prince in 2022’s “Cinderella” can attest, he can sing, too.

But it’s Hathaway who carries the movie’s emotional weight, and does so gracefully. She delivers Solène’s full range of feelings — the surprise and joy of a new relationship, the self-doubt when it seems to be going too well, and the guilt at keeping the relationship secret from Izzy — in a fully realized performance. Hathaway makes “The Idea of You” one of the sharpest, most honest romances you’ve seen in a long time.

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‘The Idea of You’

★★★1/2

Starts streaming Thursday, May 2, on Prime video. Rated R for some language and sexual content.  Running time: 115 minutes.

Review: 'Challengers' presents a sexy love triangle that shows why Zendaya is the star of her generation

It was only a matter of time — after scoring two Emmys for “Euphoria” and playing the girlfriend roles in three “Spider-Man” movies and “Dune: Part Two” — before Zendaya would get a movie to shine as the powerful star that she is.

“Challengers,” a sexy love triangle set in the world of professional tennis, is that movie. And Zendaya is spectacular in it, matched well with male stars Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist, all helmed by director Luca Guadagnino — who finds in his leading lady the perfect person to act out his sexual power dynamics.

Zendaya plays Tashi Donaldson, who we meet at a tennis tournament where her husband, Art Donaldson (Faist), whom Tashi coaches, is the odds-on favorite to win. But there’s a surprise at this tournament: A late entry by a journeyman player, Patrick Zweig (O’Connor). And to say Tashi, Art and Patrick have some history is understatement.

The script, by first-time screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, takes us back 13 years, when Art and Patrick are best friends, on the rise in the juniors tennis circuit. At one tournament, they meet Tashi, a phenom player who’s on her way to be one of the greats. After the tourney, the three of them are together in a hotel room and … well, if you’ve seen the trailer, you have some idea of what happens next.

In the intervening years, Guadagnino shows us how the guys’ competitive nature spilled off the court and onto their dealings with Tashi, who goes from dating Patrick to marrying Art. The boys, though, aren’t Tashi’s primary focus — she doesn’t think love means nothing, as the old tennis joke goes, but the game means more. And when her dreams of Grand Slam titles are sidelined by a knee injury, she becomes determined to channel her tennis knowledge and drive into Art. 

In the movie’s terms, Zendaya is the champion in every way. Guadagnino and cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (who also collaborated with the director on “Call Me By Your Name” and “Suspiria”) gravitate toward her at every opportunity — who wouldn’t? — and she matches that attention with a performance that’s blazing with intensity. The intimate scenes she shares with O’Connor (“The Crown”) and Faist (“West Side Story”) are fiery and passionate, and not for a moment is she not in control.

I can’t say much about the ending, the rare sports showdown where the winner isn’t pre-ordained. It’s for sure going to get people talking. Some may find it a cheat, but I believe it’s the only way — knowing what we know about these characters and what matters to them — it could have played out, and it gives “Challengers” an added delightful twist.

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‘Challengers’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, April 26, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for language throughout, some sexual content and graphic nudity. Running time: 131 minutes.

Review: 'Boy Kills World' is a bloody mess of an action movie, whose brains don't quite match its bravado

The blood-drenched action orgy of “Boy Kills World” should be everything a lover of over-the-top mayhem could hope for — breathtaking martial-arts moves, copious violence and bodies splattering like ketchup bottles dropped from a great height.

So why does this exercise in excess by rookie German director Moritz Mohr feel so draining? I think it’s because the movie can’t resist nudging the viewer in the ribs every five minutes to point out how clever it thinks it is.

The movie’s title hero, known to us only as Boy, is interoduced as a child (played by Nicholas and Cameron Crovetti), ruthlessly trained by a character known as Shaman (played by the Indonesian martial-arts star Yayan Ruhian) to be a killing machine. Boy is taught, quite brutally, to sacrifice all comfort and emotion to train his body to kill Hilda Van Der Koy (Famke Janssen), the oligarch who runs the nearby city-state. 

Boy believes that Hilda is responsible for killing his mother and forever separating him from his sister, Mina (Quinn Copeland), whom Boy sees as a hallucination or imaginary friend. Boy is deaf and mute, but can understand people by reading their lips — though it’s an imperfect skill. Boy also listens a lot to a voice in his head, his inner narrator, a voice based on a video game character (provided for the movie by H. Jon Benjamin, known for his roles in “Bob’s Burgers” and “Archer”).

Boy grows up under Shaman’s regimen, and as an adult (played by Bill Skarsgard) is determined to get close enough to Hilda to kill her. That’s easier said than done, with Hilda locked away somewhere in the city, surrounded by a security squad led by the toughest fighter of all, known as June 27 (Jessica Rothe). Boy finds help from two resistance fighters, Basho (“Bullet Train’s” Andrew Koji) and Bennie (Isaiah Mustafa). 

The plan is to get to Hilda through the Culling, the semi-annual ritual Hilda uses to maintain her reign of terror, where dissidents are rounded up to fight in a televised death match. Hilda’s son Glen (Sharlto Copley) is the Culling’s on-air emcee, though the brains of the operation are his wife, Melanie (Michelle Dockery), who produces the spectacle, and his brother Gideon (Brett Gelman), who writes the scripts.

There should be plenty of room in all this choreographed madness for some biting satire of the Van Der Koy’s fascist rule, the corrosive effect of TV violence or, you know, any of the targets writers Tyler Burton Smith and Arend Remmers devise in the set-up. But the movie misses major opportunities to show it’s got brains behind the bashing.

Eventually “Boy Meets World” disappoints, delivering lots of punches but never landing a moment that’s a true knockout.

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‘Boy Kills World’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, April 26, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong bloody violence and gore throughout, language, some drug use and sexual references. Running time: 115 minutes.

Review: 'Unsung Hero' is an earnest and humane telling of a family's faith and togetherness — and how they paid off in the Christian music scene

Like many of the Christian-centered movies produced by brothers Andrew and Jon Erwin — a list that includes “I Still Believe,” “American Underdog,” “Jesus Revolution” and “Ordinary Angels” — the family drama “Unsung Hero” is based on a true story and captures people at a point where faith and family pull them through tough times.

What makes these movies fascinating isn’t the faith part — that’s a given in these movies — but the specific ways family comes through as the ultimate expression of love.

If this all feels too cloying and sentimental for your tastes, you can find your entertainment elsewhere. It’s not all my cup of tea sometimes, either, but I recognize when it’s being done with heart and sincerity.

People familiar with the Christian music scene — this movie’s target audience — likely know where this movie is going. It’s the origin story of Christian singing star Rebecca St. James, and of her brothers Joel and Luke Smallbone, better known as the Christian pop duo For King & Country. (The marketing, including the poster labeling this as “A For King & Country Film,” spoiled it before I did.)

The movie tells of the Smallbone family, parents David (Joel Smallbone of For King & Country, the movie’s co-director, plays his own father) and Helen (Daisy Betts) and their six children. When we first meet the family in 1991, David is a Christian concert promoter in Australia, eager to make the big time by booking the American star Amy Grant for a tour of Australia. He does so, in the midst of an economic depression, and the effort leaves him and his family deeply in debt.

Their one hope, David convinces Helen, is to take the family to the States so he can represent a Christian musician there. So the family packs up and moves to Tennessee, only to find the musician has signed with his old manager (Don Most), leaving David with no way to provide for his family. Led by Helen, though, the family rallies, taking odd jobs and pooling their dimes and dollars. They’re buoyed by David’s father, James (Terry O’Quinn), back in Australia, who reminds David that “family’s not in the way — they are the way.”

The family receives help from a couple they meet at church, Jed (Lucas Black), a songwriter in Nashville, and his wife, Kay (Candace Cameron Bure). Their charity is much appreciated by the Smallbones — though, after a while, David finds his pride is wounded and he starts to get irritated at their generosity.

By chance, the Smallbones also meet record producer Eddie Degarmo (Jonathan Jackson), who remembers David from his Australian promoter days. He recognizes that David is driven to work and support his family. Degarmo also recognizes, thanks to a tip from Jed, that the Smallbones’ eldest daughter, Rebecca (Kirrilee Berger), has an amazing singing voice and could become a star.

Joel Smallbone and co-director Richard Ramsey (they also wrote the screenplay) make the family story a celebration of a big, rambunctious family finding strength in each other. And, as the title “Unsung Hero” implies, there’s one among them carrying the biggest load — Helen, and Betts brings out the quiet dignity and no-nonsense grit she must have showed to get the family through hard times.. 

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‘Unsung Hero’

★★★

Opens Friday, April 26, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for thematic elements. Running time: 112 minutes.

Review: In 'The Scargiver,' Zach Snyder delivers a humorless second chapter to his 'Rebel Moon' franchise

If there’s an overarching reaction to director Zack Snyder’s deadeningly self-serious space opera “Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver,” it’s this: That’s all there is?!?

The first chapter, subtitled “A Child of Fire,” arrived on a cloud of Netflix-provided hype last December, billed as Snyder’s triumphant return to big-budget action movies and the start of a world-building franchise. If you want a sense of how well the movie was received — in spite of Snyder’s boast that, factoring in Netflix’s algorithms, more people saw it than bought a ticket for “Barbie” — observe that the second installment is barely making a ripple in its marketing.

The thing is, I was willing to meet “Rebel Moon” halfway. I thought the first movie was boring and bloated, but I figured that was what Snyder had to do as a warm-up for part 2, which would undoubtedly be an action extravaganza from start to finish.

So it’s surprising that after all the setting-up of part one, the second part, “The Scargiver,” spends the first of its two hours setting stuff up again. We get more reminders of Kora (Sofia Boutella), the former Imperial bodyguard to the King (Cary Elwes) and his daughter, Princess Issa (Stella Grace Fitzgerald), who was framed for an assassination attempt and fled to the peaceful farm world of Veldt. And we are reintroduced to Kora’s enemy, the evil Imperial leader Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein).

The script — by Snyder, Shay Hatten and Kurt Johnstad — also reunites with with the fighters Kora and Veldt local Gunnar (Michiel Housman) have gathered. They are: The retired general, Titus (Djimon Hounsou); the enigmant swordswoman, Nemesis (Doona Bae); the dashing warrior, Tarak (Staz Nair); and the tough-as-nails fighter Milius (E. Duffy). Each gets an extended flashback that explains what they were doing, and why they want the empire to fall.

Then, after what seems like an eternity of wooden line readings, Snyder starts the fighting. The action isn’t bad, though it often feels like Snyder is recycling moves from earlier films — especially his reliance on artfully crafted super-slow-motion. It feels like Snyder’s remaking “300,” but he gave the Spartans pew-pew laser guns.

It’s interesting to recall that Snyder reportedly pitched “Rebel Moon” to Netflix after LucasFilm rejected his pitch for a “Star Wars” movie. If so, it seems that Snyder completely missed what made the “Star Wars” franchise so memorable — not the gear or the tech, but the way George Lucas (and subsequent directors) took a cue from the classic movie serials, like “Buck Rogers” and “Flash Gordon,” that wanted to give viewers a thrill and didn’t take themselves too seriously. If there is even a milligram of humor in “Rebel Moon,” it vanishes amid all the clutter and noise.

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‘Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver’

★1/2

Starts streaming Friday, April 19, on Netflix. Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence, brief strong language and suicide. Running time: 124 minutes.