A kids’ movie that wants grown-ups to find their inner child
IF (U, 104 mins)
Verdict: Fuzzy family tear-jerker
★★★☆☆
Hoard (18, 131 mins)
Verdict: Grimy debut
★★★☆☆
BEST bring along a hankie to IF, one of those children’s movies on a mission to make grown-ups sob. Boasting a staggeringly starry voice cast (everyone from Steve Carell and Matt Damon to Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Emily Blunt), IF is an unashamedly sentimental story about a 12-year-old girl called Bea (Cailey Fleming).
After losing her mother — yes, you’ll be reaching for those tissues even before your popcorn — Bea decides to put aside childish things. ‘I’m not a kid’ she informs her granny (a gently Irish Fiona Shaw).
But with her goofy dad (John Krasinski) now also in the same New York hospital where she lost her mother, a troubled Bea gains the ability to see people’s imaginary friends ( or ‘I.F.’s), animated buddies who have been long outgrown and abandoned.
So Bea joins forces with a mysterious new neighbour (a faintly creepy Ryan Reynolds) to help reconnect the IFs with their former childhood playmates.
This is clearly a passion project for writer/director/star Krasinski, such an obviously nice guy he was typecast as Martin Freeman’s character in the American version of The Office. A family man himself — he’s married to Blunt — Krasinski has crafted an endearingly old- fashioned movie, notable for its blessed absence of smartphones or pop-culture wisecracks.
That said, today’s tweens may struggle to relate to Bea
— how many 12- year- olds would dream up Esther Williams-style musical numbers?
However, warm and heartfelt as it is, with the commendable courage to tackle a big messy theme like grief, there’s some
thing missing from IF. The jokes can fall flat, the ‘rules’ of the IFs are unclear and an over- deployed soundtrack by Michael Giacchino ( Up) relentlessly signposts what you should feel.
‘A live-action Pixar film’ is how Ryan Reynolds describes IF and that doesn’t just mean the obvious, let’s kindly term them, ‘tributes’ to the likes of Pixar’s Monsters, Inc., Inside Out and the Toy Story movies. Like them, IF feels like the product of a lot of expensive Californian therapy sessions: a
movie made less to entertain kiddies than to ‘relate’ to your inner child.
CHILDHOOD grief is processed in a much darker way in the 18-rated film Hoard. Raised in foster care, and now on the cusp of leaving school, Maria ( striking newcomer Saura Lightfoot-Leon) finds herself reverting back to the hoarding habits of her loving, but mentally ill mother (Hayley Squires) after becomingeroti÷ cally aroused by an older bin man (Joseph Quinn). For good or bad, Hoard would not exist without BFI funding, and I honestly can’t imagine who I’d send along to see it. It’s icky and deliberately disturbing, yet I couldn’t help admiring the fiercely original vision of 20- something debut director Luna Carmoon. I look forward to her next, more mature work. There’s genuine treasure gleaming in this grime.