I watched IF. This is my spoiler-y review.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
IF isn't a movie for kids.
Don't get me wrong, it's a kid-friendly movie. It's fun, has beautiful animation, and overall, it's a pretty well-made story (you can see the twists a mile away but let's save that for later). It reminds you of times when the world was still full of wonder with its music and visuals.
I don't think kids would take away as much from watching this movie as adults would.
You see things differently as a child. Some parts of this movie will fly over a kid's head. For example, I can show #bunenepupventures the parts with Bobby Moynihan and she would see a nervous guy trying to prep himself for a presentation. Show an adult those same scenes and you'll get a long, sad sigh in return.
You have to be adult enough and for lack of a better way to describe it, messed up enough, to appreciate those parts of the movie. I say this cause I did not expect to "hard cry" at 4 AM during the third act of IF.
The first 3 minutes are reminiscent of the first sequence of Pixar's UP (IYKYK) but it doesn't hit as hard (more on this later). You know something bad is going to happen even before the movie even begins. It's heavily implied that the mom died.
Then the movie begins. It revolves around a 12-year-old girl named Bea (pronounced as pea, played by Cailey Fleming). Her dad (John Krasinski) is at a hospital and is about to undergo an operation. In the meantime, she's staying with her grandmother at her flat. After she watched an old video of her and her parents when she was a kid, Bea begins seeing imaginary friends, or IFs as they like to call themselves. How can she see them? It's never explained. She can see them and for some reason (revealed later), Ryan Reynold's character, Cal, can do the same as well. He plays a disgruntled man in charge of rehoming, rather unsuccessfully, these IFs cause the kids they were originally attached to have all grown up. They don't need imaginary friends anymore. We meet Cal along with Blue, Steve Carrell's character after a failed IF rehoming attempt. Blue is a huge purple IF prominently shown in the movie's marketing material.
Bea then decides to help Cal rehome these IFs. Shenanigans ensue.
Cailey Fleming carried this film given that her character was the focal point of the story. It's not that the acting was bad, everything was well put. Krasinki was channeling Jim Halpert in the handful of scenes he was in. Ryan Reynolds was being Ryan Reynolds. Fiona Shaw, who plays the grandmother did amazing as always in her scenes. Even the actors who lent their voices to the IFs were great.
That said, for most movies, the audience's suspension of belief has to be applied cause some situations don't make sense. IF definitely requires some of that and then some more but not for the theme and the CGI, those are a given but beyond that, there are some logic issues that need to be addressed.
How can they see these IFs? Why aren't people weirded out by a pre-teen walking around with a grown-ass man? Why isn't her grandmother bothered with her going off alone or staying out at night?
That said, if you can keep still in your seat and stop asking questions, the movie takes you to that wistful state of immersion.
I was excited for this movie. I say this a lot about other actors but I will watch anything with John Krasinski in it. He was funny in The Office, he was awesome in Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, and the The Quiet Place movies have been amazing. But IF didn't feel like it landed as well. Perhaps somebody in post-production said, "No, let's not traumatize children".
On its own, the movie is good but as I said in the beginning, it could have been great. There was this part where they teased the dad dying off-screen but didn't go through with it. If they had, it would have given the audience a harder punch in the gut.
It's Shawshank Redemption if it didn't have the tunnel escape and meet-up scene in Zihuatanejo. In this version, Andy Dufresne did his time and never got to meet up with Red. (This reminds me that I am due for a rewatch of this Shawshank).
IT COULD HAVE BEEN GREAT. Instead, they chose to be a little bit emotionally manipulative in the closing montage revealing that the people they met were the kids most of the IFs were originally attached to.
Overall, IF is a GOOD watch. You won't part with the movie thinking what an amazing movie it is but it will keep you entertained and if you're an adult watching with the kids, they'd be surprised to see you crying just a little bit with some of the scenes.
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