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If, the new children’s comedy from John Krasinski, has all the makings of a family-friendly hit: a healthy dose of sentimentality, a strong emphasis on the power of children’s imaginations, and a premise of tragedy shrouded in one girl’s journey. Also, an expensive mix of live-action and animation and an all-star cast of voice actors — including George Clooney, Jon Stewart, Amy Schumer, Bradley Cooper, Maya Rudolph and Krasinski’s wife, Emily Blunt – a list game of Imaginary Friends (Ifs) forgotten by their grown-up creators and companions.
On paper, Krasinski’s first children’s film as a writer-director qualifies, though in practice it’s not as cuddly as Blue, If hammily’s giant purple bear hug, voiced by Steve Carell. There’s a hidden, superficial sweetness to this story about a girl who, in the midst of family turmoil, can suddenly see everyone’s former imaginary friends. But If doesn’t quite conjure the magic that has elevated such family classics featuring sentient non-human companions as The game of toys 3 and Paddington 2.
Still, there’s plenty of wacky, cartoony stuff for kids. And for adults prone to childhood nostalgia, there’s something winsome and sickening about the premise of Ako’s retirement home, grieving the loss of their grown-up human friends and waiting to find another playmate. Or even slightly older ex-friends, as 12-year-old Bea, played ably by Kayleigh Fleming, declares that she is no longer a child and therefore too old for games. The film opens with camcorder footage of Bea’s earlier, happier days in a playhouse in a Brooklyn apartment—a fantasy about a happy family of three who make believe, before and during her mother’s cancer (Catherine Daddario ).
Back in the present and back in New York some time later, her father (Krasinski, channeling a distilled, dumber version of Jim Halpert) is back in the creepy hospital room awaiting “broken heart” surgery because this poor kid apparently there was not enough experienced. Left to fend for herself with minimal supervision from her father’s empathetic nurse (an underused Lisa Colon-Zayas) and her sweet but no-nonsense grandmother (Fiona Shaw) – every real or imagined character here is simply giving it their all – Bea meets a strange man upstairs named Cal (Ryan Reynolds, who behaves very faithfully, for better or for worse), who runs a struggling recruitment agency from a treasure emporium with Blue and a creature from the movie Minnie Mouse and the Bee named Blossom (Phoebe Waller- most). Skeptical of the Ifs but moved by their genuine affection and plight—especially after a trip to their Memory Lane retirement home under Coney Island, a conceit aimed at parents—Bea joins the agency’s new mission: to reconnect forgotten Ifs with inner children of stressed and pressured adults in New York.
By this point, Krasinski is a proven filmmaker, and the admittedly convoluted plot with some loose ends – Cal’s whole frenetic character, for one – glides along in some confident style and echoes of beloved family films – Steve Carell’s superb voice work in Despicable Me, the post-war magic of Roald Dahl’s stories (minus anything edgy or evil), the perfect childhood nostalgia of the Toy Game franchise. Although set in present-day Brooklyn Heights, the film has a decidedly retro feel, harkening back to a time when New Yorkers decorated their apartments with vintage record players and ornate lampshades, when children were largely unsupervised and childhood memories were more tangible. (At age 12, Bea was probably born in 2010, but there’s not an iPhone in sight; fair enough, because looking at old Y2K camcorder footage is far more nostalgic than scrolling through your camera roll.)
There’s a vague sense of “out of time” to If , haunting if you think about it, but it generally floats along with the wave of gestures toward, if not always celebratory, imagination. A dance- and CGI-heavy sequence in which Bea redecorates the Memory Lane nursing home through sheer force of creativity livens up a somewhat stodgy first half, and also reminds how everything before felt curiously still in comparison. If is best when the cacophony of loyal imaginary friends—a unicorn, a green blob, a pink alligator, a talking ice cup, an invisible man named Keith, to name a few—creates the spectacle.
For a film that largely presents itself as a comedy, especially through Blue’s likeable and literally clumsy character, If is pretty short on real laughs. Instead, it settles towards the end into misty-eyed, mostly earned sweetness, with the evergreen lesson of remembering love and playfulness as you grow older. Bells and imaginary friends aside, it’s the message of the inner child that ultimately counts—and If channels enough of it that this viewer will, at least for a few moments, remember hers.
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