Have you kept your childish heart or not? The test is now in a cinema near you. It’s called IF (Imaginary friends in VF) and was written and directed by John Krasinski. You will have your answer depending on whether you come out of the screening with a smile and moist eyes or sighing in exasperation.
One thing is certain, John Krasinski has it, this child’s heart. He hid it well in his two horror dramas At Quiet Place, but he wears it on his hand in this fanciful family tale. This is probably what explains the feeling of sincerity emanating from the project. A sincerity which deserves to be underlined and is one of the great assets of this (too) feature film which stumbles over several problems. We can get tangled up in the best intentions.
IF starts in the brownstone from Brooklyn where we find Bea (Cailey Fleming), her grandmother (Fiona Shaw) and her father (John Krasinski). The latter must undergo a heart procedure. That’s a lot for the pre-teen whose mother — who we discover (of course) through happy, goofy home movies — died of cancer. Struggling with the anguish of losing the only parent she has left, she is recruited by Cal (Ryan Reynolds burlesque or sensitive, but always charismatic) for a dating agency of a particular kind: they work there to reconnect adults with imaginary friends (IFs, for imaginary friends) that they had as children and that Bea can now see.
And the little troop sets off on an adventure. At the hospital where Bea’s father is hospitalized (we all want Liza Colón-Zayas as a nurse!). Under the Coney Island amusement park where the IF retirement home is located (get out the tissues). In cold offices where anxious adults will find everything, even an (imaginary) friend who will take them back to the childhood dreams that shaped them. Because even if memory falters, memories never die.
The idea, if not innovative, is a great visual success: the integration of computer-generated images into the real shot is of very high caliber. It’s a shame that the reality of the world of IF is much less accurate and that the story, supported by the soundtrack of Michael Giacchino (which will delight fans of the composer, but will irritate others with its sometimes heavy omnipresence), lacks this emotive, tender and playful precision of the Pixar of the pre-Disney era such Monsters, Inc. And Up.
Thus, despite its creatures bursting with color (a large hairy and purple mass called Blue, a humanoid butterfly that looks like a ballerina, an old teddy bear with the poignant voice of Louis Gossett Jr. whose last role it was, etc. ), IF risks dropping a lot of little ones. As for the adults – who have lost their childish heart during life, but even a little of the others – and despite the subtle winks addressed to them (a few images of Harvey by Henri Koster (1950) and a copy of Calvin&Hobbes), they may look at their watch from time to time.
In short, another case of a film sitting between two chairs and two audiences. And this time, it’s really a shame.