IF

This weekend, IF, the second film centered around imaginary friends in 3 months,

releases in theaters. IF follows a 12-year-old girl, Bea, while she goes through a difficult experience and soon finds that she can see everyone's imaginary friends. I was interested in this movie because I really enjoyed John Krasinski's first film, A Quiet Place, and wanted to see how he would do at something so different. 

I was pretty mixed on this movie. There are some pretty high highs in this movie while also hitting some fairly low lows. I thought the overall concept was very fun with this little girl experiencing the world of imaginary friends. John Krasinski seems to do a decent job of taking a simple concept ( a horror movie where no one can talk, a little girl who can see imaginary friends) and building a whole movie around it. This movie is all about reliving your childhood as we follow Bea relearn what it means to be a kid and have fun. I also thought the characters were a lot of fun. Each IF had their own little gimmick and unique personality which made it so fun to see them on screen. The cast of this movie is also great. It has a starring cast with Steve Carrel, Ryan Reynolds, and John Krasinski while also having a lot of fun voice cameos in Matt Dameon, Sam Rockwell, Bradley Cooper, Akwafina, George Clooney, Emily Blunt, and many others. It was just fun to be able to recognize all of their voices. The movie also does a decent job of delivering a lot of cute funny moments. There isn't too much for the adults in terms of humor but kids will definitely have fun. The ending is what elevated the movie the most for me. I was going to go negative on this movie but the ending pushed it into positive for me. The ending just does a great job of tying things together with an emotional swing and makes you see the movie in a new way. 

With all the positives I had, there are still quite a bit of things that didn't work for me. The overall setup and plot felt very clunky. Leading up to Bea's meeting all of the IFs just didn't flow super well and caused the movie to feel a bit slow for the first 45 minutes. Once we got to the actual plot, I felt that it jumped around a bit too much and was a bit too complicated for a kid's movie. I also felt that the movie was a little too short. It could have been around 2 hours and probably worked a little better. Because of the shorter length, I felt that the relationship between Carl and Bea was not fleshed out as much as it could have been and that most of the IFs were a bit underutilized. A longer runtime would have solved those issues. 

Overall, while I was mixed on this film, I think it is a decent enough family film. While it isn't a great movie, it will keep the kids entertained and cause you to get emotional by the end. 

Score: 6.5/10 Grade: B- Recommendation: Wait to stream it.