Movie Thoughts: IF (2024)

• Released: May 7, 2024
  
• Directed by: John Krasinski
• Running time: 1h 44min
• Rating 3/5

Synopsis

A girl named Bea is struggling with herself as her father falls ill. She ends up teaming up with a man named Cal to find homes for several IFs, imaginary friends, who have lost their people.

My Thoughts

Not a movie I was really intending to see, but my friend insisted on watching and hey, I never say no to an extra cinema visit. And overall this movie was...fine, to be honest. Nothing great, but nothing all that bad either. It's a charming, simple film. Definitely fun for a younger audience, but I think there's enough here to keep an older audience engaged as well.

But again, it really is nothing to write home about so I can also see it being a bit boring or too juvenile for others. For me it was a fine movie, but the humor at times didn't really do it for me. The visuals are good, though, I think they did a good job on the animation of the IFs and it's fun to see how many different styles they used to capture the various creatures.

My main gripe in this movie is that near the end of the film they somehow manage to get the (now grown up) human friends of the IFs to see them again, but without a trigger. See, previously the movie established that in order for a person to re-connect with their IF, they need to experience a trigger, a sort of core memory or aspect of their character. For Bea's grandmother this was classical music and ballet. For Blue's friend this is the memory of a bakery and the scent of bread. 

But then in the epilogue scene we get a montage of a bunch of old friends reconnecting with their IFs without a trigger. Which would be fine, if it was established prior that this was possible. But the movie doesn't establish such a thing, in fact it firmly insists on such a trigger being a necessity in order for the re-connection to happen. So this just kind of feels like a plot-hole because it goes against what the movie established earlier.

Overall it's a fine movie though and I think parents can get something out of watching it with their kids. It's just not very good or anything, just average, and the ending plot-hole does bother me.