Incredible how there are now two movies this year that squander the creative imaginary friends concept.
Unlike “Imaginary” from earlier in 2024, though, “IF” is not a horror movie. Far from it. Instead it’s a family film centered on 12-year-old Bea (Cailey Fleming), a girl who’s staying at her grandma’s New York home while her father (John Krasinski) is in the hospital for a surgery. Having lost her mother due to cancer already, Bea is on edge.
That is until she comes across a man who’s accompanied by a fantastical creature, which inspires her to find out more. It turns out the guy is named Cal (Ryan Reynolds) and he’s helping various imaginary friends find new children to connect with after having been forgotten by the kids who made them. Wanting to help, Bea decides to assist Cal in the endeavor.
Before we get started, just a note, this is a spoiler review.
The script for “IF” comes across like a first draft because the film’s tone and fantasy rules are both inconsistent while the plot feels largely aimless. Regarding the latter, it gets to the point where entire plot threads become basically abandoned as the movie goes on. This starts to manifest at the start of the second act.
As previously stated, the film gets started with Bea wanting to help Cal connect imaginary friends with new kids. Now, the audience isn’t even informed if this is possible or not, but it seems like a cute enough idea for a movie. Their endeavor is unsuccessful, though, and after one attempt, Bea and Cal decide to give up and instead try a different approach.
Their next goal is to reconnect imaginary friends with their original children who are now grown adults. Again, fine, that could lead to some fun moments. Except they only really make one full attempt with this concept before it is also abandoned.
So much of the film’s first half made it seem like it was going to be about finding places for these imaginary friends. There’s even a full-on sequence where each IF is given an audition to share their background and strengths. Yet by the time the third act is underway it feels like barely anything was done with this fun concept.
The sloppy storytelling isn’t limited to that, either. For example, Bea meets an injured boy recovering at the hospital in the first act who seems like he might be a friend and supporting character who helps her with the IFs and her overall arc. But he just has one more scene before not being spotted again.
This extends right to the film’s core conflict, too. Bea’s father has to have some kind of heart surgery and has to stay several days at the hospital. This is despite him not being hooked up to machines or under observation, so one wonders why he has to be there multiple days. The details around this aspect feel underwritten and that goes right through to the end of the movie.
But what’s worse are the rules of this fantasy universe which really don’t make sense . For example, when the protagonists manage to “reconnect” the imaginary friends with their adults, they randomly start glowing red, and that’s really all there is. The adults don’t even interact with or see their imaginary friends. It’s just never acknowledged, they just glow red.
Steve Carell voices a large purple monster named Blue, and his whole goal for most of the film is just to connect with a kid or his creator. Then when he actually gets a chance to, after an extended sequence of tracking him down, he just glows red, and that’s it, there’s no follow-up or conversation. It makes you question what the point of it all was.
That leads to another problem, which is Ryan Reynold’s Cal. It’s not to difficult to figure out that Cal is Bea’s imaginary friend, who for some random reason, isn’t an animated, fantastical character. Not only this, but he never glows red, even though he’s being reunited with his creator like other IFs did at other points.
Also inconsistent is the film’s tone. The movie has some dark subject matter, with a child losing a parent and having anxiety about their other parent having to go through an operation. Yet at the same time, a lot of the material seems more appropriate for a much younger audience, making it feel like a kids movie more than one for the whole family.
The movie at least blends its animated creations in with the real world fairly well and to the film’s credit, it features some inventive, fun-looking characters in the imaginary friends. There’s a wide assortment of celebrity voices giving the IFs some personality, too, making them all unique.
However, the cute imaginary friends, as well as a solid effort from Reynolds, is nowhere near enough to salvage this feature. It’s an awkwardly written, messy film that doesn’t really work. 1.5 out of 5.
Matthew Liedke on Film 