Although you could accuse this film of being a little too sentimental in places, you’d need a heart of stone not be won over by the lack of cynicism in this old-fashioned family-friendly movie.

Premise: When 12-year-old Bea (Cailey Fleming) moves in with her grandmother (Fiona Shaw) while her father (John Krasinski) awaits heart surgery, she not only discovers that she is able to see imaginary friends (or “IFs”), but also that her grandmother’s neighbour Cal (Ryan Reynolds) can see them too and is trying to find them new homes after the IFs’ original children have grown up and forgotten them.

Review:

I missed this film in the cinema, but it ended up being the highest grossing original film of 2024, which is quite an impressive feat. On paper, this may look like a film aimed squarely at the younger end of the audience, but just as the film itself touches on the idea of adults reconnecting with their inner child, IF has plenty to offer older viewers who are willing to leave their cynicism at the door.

Written and directed by John Krasinski, IF could be seen as a huge departure from his earlier A Quiet Place films, but in actual fact, there are noticeable common themes between them both. IF and A Quiet Place are, at their heart, both about familial love and the lengths that parents will go to to protect their children from the darkness in the world, as well as the realisation that this is not always possible. John Krasinski cast himself in IF in the (relatively small) role as Bea’s father, which indicates how central he sees that father/daughter relationship to be to the film.

“…the voice cast that John Krasinski has assembled is amazing…”

The film is focused on Bea, confidently played by Cailey Fleming in her first leading role, but she shares most of her screen time with Ryan Reynolds, who plays her neighbour, Cal, who is also able to see imaginary friends/IFs. When Bea first meets Cal, he is a man who has been worn down by life and who has lost much of his hope and optimism, but Ryan Reynolds prevents Cal from becoming too much of a cliched cynic by showing that even at his lowest point, he’s still trying to do the right thing by finding new homes for the discarded IFs.

Which leads me to arguably the film’s weakest element, which is its plot. The storyline for this film feels a little disjointed in terms of what it is that Bea and Cal are trying to do – once the audience moves passed the initial scenes where Bea discovers she can see the IFs, it feels like Bea adopts quite a scattershot approach to what she tries to do to help the IFs. I appreciate that, within the context of the story, Bea is trying out various ideas and then dismissing them as they appear not to work, but from a storytelling perspective, I did find it a little disorientating keeping a track from one scene to the next what it was that Bea was trying the achieve in that scene.

“…an amusing & uplifting story that encourages us all to reconnect with our inner child…”

Which is a shame, as the rest of the film is surprisingly good. Fiona Shaw is as reliable as ever as the other main live-action cast member, bringing warmth and poignancy to a couple of key scenes. Meanwhile, the voice cast that John Krasinski has assembled is amazing, with various IFs played by the likes of Steve Carell, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Louis Gossett Jr. (who died shortly before the film’s release), Awkwafina, Emily Blunt, George Clooney, Bradley Cooper, Matt Damon, Keegan-Michael Key, Blake Lively, Sam Rockwell, Maya Rudolph and Amy Schumer, all bringing the eclectic and eccentric assortment of IFs to life.

Even though I was able to predict one of the developments in final act long before it was revealed, it didn’t curtail my enjoyment of the film at all – similarly, although you could accuse the film of being a little overly sentimental in a couple of places, there’s also no question that a number of its emotional beats hit hard. Ultimately, this is neither a out-and-out comedy, nor is it a straight-up (family friendly) drama, but instead it’s something in the middle – a gently amusing, and ultimately uplifting, story about a girl on the cusp between childhood and adulthood, that encourages us all to reconnect with our inner child. And really, who doesn’t need a little bit of that kind of magic back in their lives?