IF
Writer-director John Krasinski turns his sights on the family fantasy and comes up with a funny, strangely touching contemplation of bereavement and the need for childish imagination.
A world of pure imagination: Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Cailey Fleming
As a writer and director, the actor John Krasinski nailed the horror genre with A Quiet Place and its equally nerve-wracking sequel A Quiet Place Part II. Now the father of two young girls, Krasinski turns his attention to more family-friendly fare and brings the same ingenuity, originality and attention to detail to the table. And he’s particularly good with the scenario of a family unit devastated by death. Here, he not only explores the effects of grief but also that fine line that separates childhood from premature adulthood.
Bea (an accomplished Cailey Fleming) is the grown-up one in the dynamic that comprises herself and her grieving father (the actor John Krasinski). The latter has refused to let go of his inner child and is determined to fill the void left by his late wife with practical jokes and funny tricks. As he, too, faces a spell in hospital, Bea moves into the spacious Brooklyn brownstone of her grandmother (a glowing Fiona Shaw). “You don’t have to treat me like this. Like a kid,” Bea says soberly to her father. “Life doesn’t always have to be fun.” But Bea hadn’t reckoned that the actor playing her father also wrote the screenplay. “I can be fixed,” he reassures his daughter. “It’s a very simple surgery. And I’m going to be fine...”
In this rather bleak setting, the very grown-up Bea (she’s actually twelve-years-old) starts seeing things. Upstairs in Grandma’s house she peripherally espies fantastical shapes and overhears hushed bickering. Going to investigate, she encounters Calvin (Ryan Reynolds), a man with obviously a lot on his mind. In his apartment, filled with magical bric-a-brac, he seems to cohabit with a life-size, animated Betty Boop-like butterfly and a giant, furry purple thing seemingly modelled on ‘Sulley’ from Monsters, Inc. and Monsters University (Krasinski was the voice of ‘Frightening Frank’ in the latter).
It's been quite the year for imaginary friends (cf. Ricky Stanicky, the horror film Imaginary) and it's still only May. Here, the IFs on show are emblematic of childhood innocence and the importance of a little bit of imagination to sweeten the gloom, even in one’s later years. Baudelaire once wrote that “Genius is childhood recaptured at will” and Krasinski has lost none of the creative genius of his earlier years. What he has conjured up here operates on several levels beyond the fatuousness of Clifford The Big Red Dog, although the film’s slapstick is not its strongest point (you just can’t stop those boys and girls from the CGI toy cupboard). It is the film’s more human touches, peppered with little in-jokes (James Stewart is glimpsed on TV with his own imaginary friend, Harvey), that resonate most strongly. And Fiona Shaw has one of the film’s most captivating moments all to herself.
Sadly, bereavement is a part of most children’s life experience, and needs to be addressed in age-appropriate film and literature. That Krasinski does so with such a light touch is to be commended, as is the film’s message that we’re still allowed to have fun.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Cailey Fleming, Ryan Reynolds, John Krasinski, Fiona Shaw, Alan Kim, Liza Colón-Zayas, Bobby Moynihan, Catharine Daddario, Laquet Sharnell Pringle; and the voices of Steve Carell, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Louis Gossett Jr, Awkwafina, John Krasinski, Emily Blunt, George Clooney, Bradley Cooper, Matt Damon, Bill Hader, Richard Jenkins, Keegan-Michael Key, Blake Lively, Sebastian Maniscalco, Christopher Meloni, Matthew Rhys, Sam Rockwell, Maya Rudolph, Amy Schumer, Jon Stewart, Brad Pitt.
Dir John Krasinski, Pro John Krasinski, Allyson Seeger, Andrew Form and Ryan Reynolds, Screenplay John Krasinski, Ph Janusz Kamiński, Pro Des Jess Gonchor, Ed Christopher Rouse and Andy Canny, Music Michael Giacchino, Costumes Jenny Eagan, Sound Darren Maynard and Malte Bieler.
Sunday Night Productions/Maximum Effort-Paramount Pictures.
103 mins. USA/Canada. 2024. UK and US Rel: 17 May 2024. Cert. U.
