Tweet
This is a pretty unusual movie, especially coming from writer/director John Krasinski, who up until now has been mostly known for the "A Quiet Place" series, and playing goofy-but-lovable Jim on the TV show "The Office."
This year he bailed out of the AQP films and decided to make a movie "for his kids," and although the kids might have a tough time understanding the somewhat convoluted plot, they will likely be entertained by the goofy creatures that are various peoples' 'imaginary friends,' or "IFs," that the film centers around.
The IFs in this movie are a wild array of strange creatures. I don't really remember ever having any IFs of my own as a kid, but I always figured that if a person DID have an imaginary friend, it would be another person, not a marshmallow with his head on fire, or a glass of water with a talking ice cube, or a blob of slime. However, I guess if IFs were regular people, the movie wouldn't be nearly as interesting to watch. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
This movie is one of those requires patience, something the target audience may or may not have in sufficient amounts, sad to say. It starts out slowly and builds gradually, until about two-thirds in, the pieces all begin to fall together and make sense. I suspect if you played this for a group of kids and asked them to describe the story, you'd get some wildly different interpretations of what's going on.
It has some goofy fun spots (not as many as I expected), and some surprisingly moving scenes as well. The cast does a terrific job overall, especially 17-year-old Cailey Fleming, who plays Bea, a 12 year old girl. (What, there were no actual 12-year-olds available? Whatever, she really does look about 12.)
Anyway, Bea is dealing with more problems than any 12-year-old should have to. Her mom died from cancer before the story begins, and when we meet her, she's coming to stay with her grandma while her dad has heart surgery. Dad, played by director Krasinski, is one of those goofy-but-lovable dad types who's always playing pranks (sound familiar?). People, including Bea, keep telling him to cut it out, to which he replies, "Never!" It's his way of trying to give Bea some laughs in her mostly joyless life.
Bea's grandma happens to live in one of those creepy old apartment buildings in which things always seem to go bump in the night, so one night she sees this odd creature who looks like an oversized bug of some sort, following her grandma around. Investigating, she discovers an upstairs apartment room occupied by Calvin (played by Ryan Reynolds), a sort of Willy-Wonka-without-the-candy type who has a whole lot of very odd-looking fantasy creature friends. Bea feels some kind of a connection with them, being somewhat of an outsider herself, and they all become fast friends.
These creatures are IFs, whose kid-inventors have forgotten about, and Calvin seems to be somewhat of a leader among them. In this world, if you create an imaginary friend, that creature lives on, even after you stop caring about it or believing in it. Calvin and Bea journey to an abandoned amusement park, in which there is this whole underground "retirement home" for long-forgotten IFs. Bea, through some sort of movie plot maneuvering, comes up with the idea of trying to unite these IFs with new kids so they'll be happy.
And there we have to stop, because what I've described up to now is a standard kiddie movie plot. What happens from here on out is the sort of story that turns this from a standard kiddie movie into an actual good movie for everyone. When the pieces start to fall into line, you get a very warm and fuzzy feeling that I haven't experienced from a movie in quite a while. It's a bit magical, along with being profoundly sad one minute and joyful the next. You just need to watch it and you'll see what I mean. See if you don't get a lump in your throat at the end.
It reminded me a lot of the old movie "Pleasantville," in which two teens get sucked into the world of a black-and-white TV show and start infusing that world with the "colorful" aspects of life that the TV characters never even knew existed.
The various IFs in the movie are voiced by a who-who of modern Hollywood. Krasinski must have gone through his phone and just called everybody. You have Steve Carell, Awkwafina, Louis Gossett Jr., Amy Schumer, Emily Blunt, George Clooney, Blake Lively and a bunch more. They all have a great time with their mostly small parts, Steve Carell in particular.
The musical score was excellent, and there's a lot of nice use of older pop music, like Nat King Cole's classic "L-O-V-E" which I hadn't heard in a long time.
Overall, it's a movie that I expected to go "eh" for, but wound up liking very much and would like to see it again. If you like fantasy stories and/or animation, check it out. The only criticism I've got is, it takes a while to get moving, due to the large amount of exposition required to put all the story elements into place, mostly. That may translate into kids being bored, as this is really a lot more of a movie for grown-ups (especially dads) than kids.
Still, 3 out of 4 stars from me.
This year he bailed out of the AQP films and decided to make a movie "for his kids," and although the kids might have a tough time understanding the somewhat convoluted plot, they will likely be entertained by the goofy creatures that are various peoples' 'imaginary friends,' or "IFs," that the film centers around.
The IFs in this movie are a wild array of strange creatures. I don't really remember ever having any IFs of my own as a kid, but I always figured that if a person DID have an imaginary friend, it would be another person, not a marshmallow with his head on fire, or a glass of water with a talking ice cube, or a blob of slime. However, I guess if IFs were regular people, the movie wouldn't be nearly as interesting to watch. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
This movie is one of those requires patience, something the target audience may or may not have in sufficient amounts, sad to say. It starts out slowly and builds gradually, until about two-thirds in, the pieces all begin to fall together and make sense. I suspect if you played this for a group of kids and asked them to describe the story, you'd get some wildly different interpretations of what's going on.
It has some goofy fun spots (not as many as I expected), and some surprisingly moving scenes as well. The cast does a terrific job overall, especially 17-year-old Cailey Fleming, who plays Bea, a 12 year old girl. (What, there were no actual 12-year-olds available? Whatever, she really does look about 12.)
Anyway, Bea is dealing with more problems than any 12-year-old should have to. Her mom died from cancer before the story begins, and when we meet her, she's coming to stay with her grandma while her dad has heart surgery. Dad, played by director Krasinski, is one of those goofy-but-lovable dad types who's always playing pranks (sound familiar?). People, including Bea, keep telling him to cut it out, to which he replies, "Never!" It's his way of trying to give Bea some laughs in her mostly joyless life.
Bea's grandma happens to live in one of those creepy old apartment buildings in which things always seem to go bump in the night, so one night she sees this odd creature who looks like an oversized bug of some sort, following her grandma around. Investigating, she discovers an upstairs apartment room occupied by Calvin (played by Ryan Reynolds), a sort of Willy-Wonka-without-the-candy type who has a whole lot of very odd-looking fantasy creature friends. Bea feels some kind of a connection with them, being somewhat of an outsider herself, and they all become fast friends.
These creatures are IFs, whose kid-inventors have forgotten about, and Calvin seems to be somewhat of a leader among them. In this world, if you create an imaginary friend, that creature lives on, even after you stop caring about it or believing in it. Calvin and Bea journey to an abandoned amusement park, in which there is this whole underground "retirement home" for long-forgotten IFs. Bea, through some sort of movie plot maneuvering, comes up with the idea of trying to unite these IFs with new kids so they'll be happy.
And there we have to stop, because what I've described up to now is a standard kiddie movie plot. What happens from here on out is the sort of story that turns this from a standard kiddie movie into an actual good movie for everyone. When the pieces start to fall into line, you get a very warm and fuzzy feeling that I haven't experienced from a movie in quite a while. It's a bit magical, along with being profoundly sad one minute and joyful the next. You just need to watch it and you'll see what I mean. See if you don't get a lump in your throat at the end.
It reminded me a lot of the old movie "Pleasantville," in which two teens get sucked into the world of a black-and-white TV show and start infusing that world with the "colorful" aspects of life that the TV characters never even knew existed.
The various IFs in the movie are voiced by a who-who of modern Hollywood. Krasinski must have gone through his phone and just called everybody. You have Steve Carell, Awkwafina, Louis Gossett Jr., Amy Schumer, Emily Blunt, George Clooney, Blake Lively and a bunch more. They all have a great time with their mostly small parts, Steve Carell in particular.
The musical score was excellent, and there's a lot of nice use of older pop music, like Nat King Cole's classic "L-O-V-E" which I hadn't heard in a long time.
Overall, it's a movie that I expected to go "eh" for, but wound up liking very much and would like to see it again. If you like fantasy stories and/or animation, check it out. The only criticism I've got is, it takes a while to get moving, due to the large amount of exposition required to put all the story elements into place, mostly. That may translate into kids being bored, as this is really a lot more of a movie for grown-ups (especially dads) than kids.
Still, 3 out of 4 stars from me.