John Krasinski's "IF" (live-action/animated movie) News & Discussion Thread

[Elijah Abrams]

Paramount Pictures has released the first trailer & poster for "IF", a live-action/CG hybrid movie written by, directed by, and starring John Krasinski (A Quiet Place). The synopsis, per Variety:

Written and directed by the “Quiet Place” helmer, “IF,” an abbreviation for “Imaginary Friends,” is a new fantasy comedy that follows a young girl who starts seeing imaginary friends that have been abandoned by their originators. The film stars Krasinski, Ryan Reynolds, Cailey Fleming, Fiona Shaw, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Louis Gossett Jr., Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Maya Rudolph, Jon Stewart, Bobby Moynihan, Sam Rockwell, Sebastian Maniscalco, Christopher Meloni, Richard Jenkins, Awkwafina and Steve Carell, who voices a huge, cuddly purple creature.

Per Cartoon Brew, it is basically described as "a live-action Pixar film".

There is also a "behind-the-scenes" video Paramount posted on their YouTube.

Are you guys excited/interested?

P.S. Please don't compare it to Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, or make jokes related to that comparison, because it is getting very annoying.

 

[Frontier]

It looks cute enough .

 

[prpis]

It looks very cute! I love ideas surrounding imaginary friends so this could be cute!

 

[Pooky]

Tracking quite well for an original (i.e. not based on an established/know property) film

John Krasinski’s ‘IF’ Tracking for Promising $40M-Plus Opening

 

[Frontier]

Tracking quite well for an original (i.e. not based on an established/know property) film

John Krasinski’s ‘IF’ Tracking for Promising $40M-Plus Opening

That's good to hear. It looks very cute .

 

[Mejo]

Reminds me a lot of that Eddie Murphy Dr. Dolittle film in that 3/4th’s of the cast are voiced acted by celebrities in minor roles (though unfortunately, no Norm Macdonald).

 

[kanc]

According to zap2it, Nickelodeon, umm.. Nick@Nite will premiere IF Presents: The Power of Imagination (documentary of behind the scenes of upcoming movie, IF) on Fri May 10 at 9:15pm after Sing 2. Repeats will continue afterwards. Kira Kosarin will host the special.

Full episodes and TV Listings- Zap2it.com

Watch full episodes at Zap2it.com and find where and when to watch episode on your local broadcast, cable and satellite TV channels.

tvlistings.zap2it.com

 

[Pooky]

Reminds me a lot of that Eddie Murphy Dr. Dolittle film in that 3/4th’s of the cast are voiced acted by celebrities in minor roles

Pretty sure the Robert Downey Jr. Dolittle was exactly the same!

 

[Mejo]

Pretty sure the Robert Downey Jr. Dolittle was exactly the same!

Yep, pretty much on the money: https://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/movies/Dolittle/

 

[RainbowCupcake]

Is this the right thread to post reviews of the film? I hope so!

Spoiler: Movie Review

Anyway, I saw "IF" on opening night at the drive-in. I'm confident this will be an unpopular opinion on Anime Superhero, but I didn't like it. At all. The animation looks nice, but that's the only positive I can give it.

There is a part in the film where an exasperated character asks another, "What the hell do you want?!" This is the central question I had throughout the entire duration of "IF." What does this film want? Does it want to be a comedy? Because I didn't laugh once. Does it want to be a drama? It was super depressing, which felt off because it was about imaginary friends, or IFs. Or perhaps it's supposed to be a dramedy? Because it whiplashes between lighthearted and heartwrenching scenes without a natural transition. Is this movie for kids? Adults? Kidults? It's too immature for adults to take seriously yet too mature for kids to relate. Basically, the movie doesn't know its audience or genre, and it shows.

The plot was one of the most puzzling I've seen. What was the story, exactly? We know the mom dies at the beginning, but then the dad goes into the hospital because he's...sick? That's never really explained. He says he has a "broken heart," but I took that as a metaphor that he's missing his deceased wife. Apparently, he has a heart condition (I had to look this up afterward). Yet he's lively enough to hide from Bea in the closet when she visits him? The only time he looked really sick was during the climax.

Also, who owns the apartment in New York? It would make more sense if Bea and her dad were currently living there, and then Bea's grandmother would come over to watch her while Dad was away in the hospital. But it's clear that Bea has been away from her childhood home for a while, so what happened to the apartment all those years? Did it just sit dormant? How long has Bea been away? These details may seem insignificant to the main storyline. Still, they should have been explained in a line or two to help the audience follow along. We don't need a lengthy backstory, but this story has too many plot holes to make sense.

Once Bea settles into her new (old?) home, she visits her dad in the hospital every day. Wandering the streets of New York by herself—a female—at 12 years old. And doesn't go to school, apparently. Is it summer in New York? No one really knows because we, the audience, are supposed to make all of these assumptions and not question them.

The story just gets more perplexing from there. Who can see imaginary friends and why? Bea can see them because she's...suffering trauma? Because she's trying to grow up too fast? Also, part of the movie's plot is delivering old imaginary friends back to their creators, who were once children. In what's supposed to be tender, profound moments, they "glow red," and you think that's when the creators will see them again. But no. We only find out the creators, now adults, are reunited with their IFs in a quick scene right before the credits.

People have been arguing that the twist at the end cancels out all the confusion in the story. It's a great twist (albeit with some issues of its own), but why do I have to suffer 90 minutes being lost before I figure out what's happening? I watched the movie with my mother, and after about 45 minutes, she turned to me and asked, "Do you have any idea what's happening in this movie?" So it wasn't just me that was stumped.

None of the characters here were memorable. Cailey Fleming is a good actress, but her character (Bea) was so bland that I had trouble empathizing with her. The grandmother was barely in the movie (except for one scene where we're suddenly supposed to like her), and so was the dad. The movie was dead set on showcasing Bea's grief over her mother dying. I wish it had focused on the fact that she didn't appear to have any adult support system in her life. Instead, it was normalized and brushed off. Ryan Reynolds just looked bored the entire time. And the IFs weren't as charming as the ones in Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. I guess my favorite character was Blue because I enjoyed Steve Carrell's voicework here. But even he felt like a stereotypical bumbling monster character.

The scene in the middle—the one you see in all the trailers with the dragon and the dancing—is the film's only saving grace. It was fun, creative, and energetic. "IF" could have been excellent if the rest of the film had that tone (with some appropriate, more serious moments thrown in). But alas, it's not. What a joke that "IF" has been dubbed "a live-action Pixar" film.

Overall, "IF" was a huge swing and a miss for me. 4/10.

 

[Dr.Pepper]

I finally got around to seeing this and I enjoyed it. It reminded me of whimsical adventure movies like Jumanji. Some of the plot twists were pretty predictable but that didn’t take away from the movie for me.