It’s easy to imagine a better film than ‘IF’
It’s great when filmmakers go out on a limb. But sometimes the limb breaks.
With “IF,” writer-director John Krasinski attempts a grand-scale celebration of the imagination, with musical sequences and bursts of color — a feast for the eyes and spirit. Unfortunately, he ends up with something else.
“IF” may have the sheen and aura of an expensive, important production, with a good cast and lots of famous names in voice roles (Steve Carell, George Clooney, Richard Jenkins), but the movie is a disordered wreck that confuses impulse for inspiration and dissipates any impossibility of impact by constantly switching focus.
Even the central concept of the imaginary friend — IF, for short — seems borrowed, namely from Pixar’s “Toy Story” series, and to the extent it’s original, it’s imprecise and unappealing. “IF” is a weak children’s film and an even worse movie for adults, something that will bore children and displease their parents’ inner child.
Still, it starts well. In a series of home-movie excerpts, we get a family’s history. Bea (Cailey Fleming), a 12-year-old girl, has recently experienced the loss of her mother, and now her father is in the hospital for some kind of dangerous medical procedure, possibly heart surgery. In the lead-up to the operation, Bea is staying at her grandmother’s apartment in Brooklyn.
Krasinski casts himself as the father and plays him as a wonderful guy — warm, fun-loving and reassuring. Five minutes into the movie, we already care about these people.
So what we seem to have here is a simple, powerful story of a girl who’s terrified of losing her father. You’d figure everything that follows will proceed from that compelling emotional situation, and yet the movie goes in another direction. Bea discovers an apartment in her grandmother’s building inhabited by former Imaginary Friends, led by Cal,