Movie review: ‘IF’ has charm, but tries too hard

John Krasinski seems like a nice guy. I’ve never met the man, obviously, but his “good dad” and “wife guy” energy reads as sincere. He radiates a genial, likable vibe onscreen.

“IF,” Krasinki’s latest writing and directorial effort, is as likable as its maker — it’s earnest, pleasant, “nice,” But as Stephen Sondheim once informed us, “nice is different than good,” and “IF” ends up being sweet and sloppy in about equal measure.

The film follows Bea (Cailey Fleming), a young girl who has seen enough turmoil early in life (her mother died of an unspecified illness; her father is about to undergo an operation for an equally unspecified ailment) that she’s become if not cynical then certainly jaded. She insists to everyone she meets that she’s “not a child.”

But Bea clearly hasn’t left “childish things” entirely behind her, as she finds herself able to see otherwise invisible imaginary friends — or “IFs”, as they prefer to be called — who have been left behind by their now grown “owners.”.

Along with a sardonic man named Cal (Ryan Reynolds), Bea sets about helping the displaced “IFs” find new human beings to encourage and inspire.

“IF” feels like an intended inheritor of the films of Pixar’s golden period. It’s virtually an inverted take on “Monsters Inc.,” where, instead of going into the secret world of monsters who hide under the bed, we instead follow abandoned imaginary fantasy figures into our regular human world.

But unlike the best of the Pixar movies, which execute their high concepts in clear, readily understandable ways — metaphors rendered in such simple terms that even children can grasp them — “IF” gets bogged down in the mechanics of its world building.

I confess I spent much of the film’s run time trying to parse out what exactly the “rules” of this world actually were. If kids create their own IFs, wouldn’t it make more sense for those IFs to just fade away as kids outgrow them, rather than hanging around unwanted?

If old IFs are getting assigned to new kids, does that mean there’s a whole other group of new IFs getting dispossessed? Are the IFs entirely imaginary, or do they have some kind of mysterious corporeal essence that allows them to manipulate objects in the real world?

I realize, mind you, that trying to figure out the “rules” in a movie like this is fundamentally silly.

It’s like trying to figure out the logic of “The Wizard of Oz” — you’re playing the game wrong, dummy, just get swept up in the magic of it all.

But that’s the problem. “IF” is trying so hard to charm that it often feels lead footed and lumpy.

The phrase “Spielbergian” must’ve been thrown around a lot in pre-production — cinematographer Janusz Kaminski has been Spielberg’s primary cameraman for 30 years, and composer Michael Giacchino is doing one of his periodic John Williams imitations with this score, all big swelling strings and whimsical little piano riffs.

It’s all just a bit much. Giacchino’s music, pretty on its own, is saccharine and goopy and ladled over every square inch of the screen until the movie starts to crumble, like a soggy piece of bread dipped in butter.

Krasinski himself shows up in a supporting role as Bea’s father, playing the kind of annoying goofball who is supposed to be lovable in movies — a practical joker who dances with his IV bag and stages a scene to make it look like he crawled out his hospital window — but would be insufferable in person.

Krasinski’s gurning, cutesy performance is a good embodiment of the movie itself: it’s a little too enthusiastic, too puppy dog-like in its desire to be liked.

Krasinski has been very open about having written “IF” primarily for his own children. The genesis of the project apparently came during the pandemic, when Krasinski noticed his kids, stressed by the state of the world, were playing less, growing up faster.

There’s something sweet in the gesture of wanting to make a film to, in essence, tell his kids that it’s OK to be kids. This is an intended warm hug of a movie, utterly guileless.

There are individual elements of the movie that charm. Fleming is quite appealing in her first lead role.

The sentimentality is inviting and welcoming in some individual sequences, like one where Fleming’s grandmother dances to a ballet record from her childhood. But it’s easy for that kind of sentiment to turn sloppy. It’s easy for those kinds of earnest impulses to become cringe-inducing.

“IF” ends up being an easy movie to like, but a hard movie to recommend. It means well, but it’s hard not to notice how forced it all feels.

C.B. Jacobson is an Annandale native who makes independent films at Buddy Puddle Productions, and writes about movies at picturegoer.substack.com. Keep an eye peeled for him at the Emagine Monticello movie theater on Tuesday nights — seated in the middle of the auditorium, with a book in hand.

At a glance

What: “IF,” rated PG

Director: John Krasinski

Starring: Cailey Fleming, Ryan Reynolds, John Krasinski, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Steve Carell

Running time: 104 minutes

Rating: ★★½