Click here for the flashback interview with John Krasinski for THE HOLLARS.
John Krasinski’s great strength as a filmmaker is that he can capture the full spectrum of emotions, the fleeting bit of comfort in remembering a loved one who has died while the grief is still raw, or the poignant joy of remembering a long-ago dream that never was, but that still burns brightly in memory. In his latest film, IF, he employs that delicate skill in a story that could be more focused, but still has the power to grab your heart in a big, warm hug.
The loved one who has passed on is Bea’s mother, and that part of the story is told with an introductory montage that slowly builds to the inevitable with tiny clues and a small child’s incomprehension of what is happening. Cut to a few years later and Bea (Cailey Fleming), now 12, is back with her grandmother (Fiona Shaw) in Brooklyn when her father (Krasinski) faces his own medical crisis, but one from which he promises to recover. Putting on a brave face, and asserting that she is no longer a kid, Bea refuses to be coddled by her grandmother and her indifferent cooking skills, or by her father, who is a born showman and comedian.
Bea doesn’t open up until she follows what she thinks is a little girl about her own age to the top floor of her grandmother’s apartment building. Told from behind a closed door behind which Bea is sure she saw the girl go that there are no children there, Bea confesses that she is feeling all alone and needs a friend to talk to before behind chased away by the elderly woman who appear in the hall.
Bea continues to see the other girl, eventually discovering not just Blossom (Phoebe Bridge-Waller) a giant bee in a tutu, but also Blue (Steve Carrell), a room-filling purple plushie with a sneezing problem and a needy personality, and the human, Cal (Ryan Reynolds) who seems to be in charge of them. Well, in charge of finding them new kids, but with no success. These creatures are IFs, imaginary friends conjured up by kids who have outgrown them, leaving them to a tedious retirement beneath Coney Island. In a rush of empathy, Bea takes on Cal’s job, throwing herself into a magical world of IFs, from a constellation of bubbles with googly eyes, to an ice cube in a glass of water supported by stick legs and red sneakers.
The voice work is superb, as are the imaginative expressions of childhood manifestations of a best friend. Carrell brings a sweetness to Blue’s desperation for a new kid to befriend that raises the emotional stakes for Bea and for us. The effects are also very good, the best of which features Cal climbing out of an impressionist-style painting without quite shaking off the oeuvre. On the other hand, an effects-fest in which Bea uses her imagination to do a makeover of the IFs retirement home devolves into a tired 80s song montage, which come across as cheesy even with Tina Turner driving the music.
The mission to give the IFs a renewed purpose is satisfyingly complicated, with a resolution that is heart-warming, but diffused, and lacking a narrative punch. That last cannot be said for the testy bond between Bea and Cal, the former pretending to a maturity for which she longs, but is not really ready to accept, and he a snarky, embittered hipster who can’t bring himself to walk away from the urgency the IFs have to find a new kid. These are delicate performances from Fleming and Reynolds that never stray far from the emotional stakes at play. They might make jokes, but, like Krasinski’s script, they never make the joke about Bea’s underlying fears. When Bea steps away from herself to make friends with a cheerful boy (Alan Kim), whose physical injuries mirror Bea’s psychological ones, the hesitation to reach out is a sticking point that she visibly but subtly works through in a matter of seconds. If her character isn’t mature, Fleming’s work certainly is. b
IF keeps us guessing for a while about just how real Bea’s experiences with the IFs are, which works well, and it has a nice quotient of slapstick and sly humor going for it. It works best as a metaphor of finding the best way to get through the pain that inevitably comes with opening your heart to the world. It never promises that life will be easy, but it does offer the hope that present joy can ease future sadness, and that the sadness is worth the joy.
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