I took my nine-year-old daughter to see IF, the recent movie with Ryan Reynolds, John Krasinski, and young Cailey Fleming as the lead. It’s a sweet story about imagination and growing up. I hadn’t read any reviews and knew nothing about it before going, but I knew what we were in for when there were scenes of some of the characters watching the Jimmy Stewart classic “Harvey,” about a man and his imaginary friend, a giant rabbit.
The film deftly handles some serious subjects, including the death of a parent and the serious illness of another. Normally, I would be worried that such a tale might be guilty of mawkishness, of overloading us with too much pathos, but this movie had such good humor and genial performances that it never veers into this kind of cheap emotion.
At the heart of this story is the idea that as we age, we leave behind childish things in our eagerness to become adults. The danger is that you can completely lose your imagination, your sense of wonder, all the things that make life worth living in the first place. The main character, twelve-year-old Bea, is starting to close herself off from a world of hurt after losing her mother; her father, played by Krasinski, becomes ill with a heart condition, leaving the young girl in a scary and vulnerable situation. She stays with her kindly grandmother, played by Fiona Shaw in another fine performance, and immediately lets grandma know she’s no longer a kid, and can deal with adult problems.
While worrying about her dad, Bea meets one of her grandmother’s neighbors, an eccentric man named Cal (Ryan Reynolds), who, she learns, lives with a variety of IFs, or ‘imaginary friends’ who have been abandoned by children who grew up and grew out of them. There is a giant purple monster that is on the advertising for the film, voiced by Steve Carrell, as well as a ballerina, a spy, a teddy bear, and a whole cast of whimsical characters in search of children to help. The problem is that adults, and even most children, cannot see these imaginary beings, no matter how hard the creatures try to get their attention.
This setup may sound a bit daft, but I found it a sweet story, and one that had some surprising depth. Every adult I know can use more of the things that the movie explores—fun, warmth, laughter, imagination, and everything else that children have in abundance and that most adults lose if they aren’t careful.
If the mark of a good YA story is that it keeps children engaged while also entertaining parents, IF does the job admirably. I would go as far as saying it was a moving story. My daughter loved it, and I thought it was great too, with excellent performances by all the cast, and enough comedy to lighten the tone from some more serious themes.
If you have a tween, be sure to take them to see this film. There are few movies like this, that tell an earnest tale with warmth and humor, and this is one that adults and kids can enjoy. Kudos to Krasinski, who also wrote and directed this film, it’s an excellent, heartfelt story.
Christopher Tuthill 