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Official Discussion - IF [SPOILERS]
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Summary:
A young girl who goes through a difficult experience begins to see everyone's imaginary friends who have been left behind as their real-life friends have grown up.
Director:
John Krasinski
Writers:
John Krasinski
Cast:
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Cailey Fleming as Bea
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Ryan Reynolds as Cal
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John Krasinski as Dad
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Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Blossom
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Fiona Shaw as Grandmother
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Steve Carrell as Blue
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Louis Gossett Jr. as Lewis
Rotten Tomatoes: 57%
Metacritic: 48
VOD: Theaters
This felt like the kind of movie that should have come out 30 years ago with Robin Williams in the Ryan Reynolds part and it really needed some Robin Williams energy. This felt sentimental and saccharine to an almost nauseating degree at times and I think that's because it takes itself way too seriously. Having Williams in there cracking jokes, doing impressions, and otherwise derailing the movie with humor would have gone a long way to make this a little more entertaining. Reynolds doesn't have that energy (in his defence, no one does) and that part ended up feeling kind of underwritten and flat, which kind of tanks the whole movie for me.
Robin had warmth and charm, Reynolds is just a goofball. Saying that I'd love to see Reynolds in a serious role to see if he could pull it off.
You should watch Buried. It was a good and intense movie featuring pretty much only Ryan Reynolds
I like that movie forgot it was Ryan Reynolds!
Damn you for reminding me of a movie I try to forget because it makes me extremely uncomfortable.
Yeah but for Ryan it’s like from one extreme to another. I do NOT like Buried.
He’s totally able to pull of warmth and charm as well, I blame the writing more than anything
I just introduced Jumanji to my daughter tonight, made me miss Robin Williams x 1000. She's looking forward to IF
You should show her Flubber too!
That was a unique cinema experience for me. Not for any positive reason but because as soon as it ended the whole room was loudly complaining about how awful it was
Nailed my thoughts 100 percent
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101775/
It did come out 30 years ago.
This, 100%. Overall it was still a fine feel-good movie, I don't regret spending money to see it with my kids. But the heavy-handedness was unbearable in a few scenes, especially the beginning.
I saw a review that mentioned there being a twist and was like “what is Ryan Reynolds gonna be imaginary or something” and well about halfway through I went hey I was right
honestly theres no way this movie just straight up not “a grown man busts into kids bedrooms and his best friend is a 12 year old girl” without said twist
Didn't even feel like a twist, it was so obvious. There's probably no version of this movie where that wouldn't have been confirmed, but why did they bother waiting until the very end to confirm it, when we all knew?
This also makes me think the girl is super boring if everyone else has blue furballs, dragons and marshmallows as their imaginary friends, and she just has Ryan Reynolds in Willy Wonka cosplay.
Because this movie was made for children and that twist would blow your mind if you were 7 years old.
My son is 13 and let out a very loud gasp at the big reveal. It was very satisfying for me as a parent.
Y'know...I don't feel so bad about it now. I remember thinking during the movie that this shit is SO obvious, but my kids also gasped during the reveal. They loved it and really its a movie for them not us.
"heh, gottem"
TIL I have the heart (or mind?) of a 7-year-old 😂
that's not going to hold up in a court of law
John Krasinski has said multiple times that this movie is for families. Plus besides Paw Patrol the movie, they don’t really make movies exclusively for 7 year olds. That is no longer an excuse in 2024.
If you make a movie for the whole family, that doesn't mean every element needs to work for the whole family. There's stuff in this for adults and there are bits in here just for the kids. I don't think the reveal was distractingly bad as an adult and I imagine the kids really liked it
My kids are 9 and 7 and even after the movie they didn't understand he wasn't real lol
Because the target child audience for this movie hasn't seen The Sixth Sense.
FWIW, I didn't know until the reveal. I kept wondering why this guy was involved in this whole initiative in the first place, and how it must seem creepy to anyone witnessing these two together.
There's little clues like no one actually acknowledges Ryan Reynolds in any scene besides other IFs.
Also in the scene with the receptionist when the girl is being hugged by Blue, it pans to the receptionist's view of her just kinda floating and Ryan Reynolds should be in her eyesight too but is missing from that shot.
My 6 year old was happy for the reveal. Made her feel smart figuring it out. To me that’s the key here. This is a movie for children that need the hand hold cause they don’t understand the language of film yet.
Just my 2c.
I nudged my wife about 30 minutes in and said: "She see's dead people".
She chortled.
They didn't wait until the end to confirm it. One of his first lines when he first "meets" her is very heavily alluding to what he is. He says it's been ages since she's been up there before, and Blue soon after says he's happy that she finally remembered them. In a movie all about IFs wanting to be remembered. It's very obvious what all that is meant to imply, and nobody who's seen a movie before would have failed to grasp that.
Then there's the fact that, on multiple occasions, he reacts to half-statements as if he already knows what she's thinking. Biggest example is when she bursts into the room at the end and says she's not ready. He already knows what she's talking about.
The Calvin reveal is a twist for Bea, but at basically no point does the movie actually act as if it's meant to be a twist for the audience. The movie is far less concerned with plot twists than it is with emotions and style. It's honestly super remarkable so many people in this comment section failed to grasp that. Not every movie is trying to shock you. Sometimes, they're just there to entertain. I'd think it would be a no-brainer that a movie with three extended musical sequences falls into the latter category.
Exactly. Don't understand how people didn't get this instantly.
I remember there was a point where she’s walking on a crosswalk and him and Blue aren’t behind her….
That’s when I knew 😳
I didn't pick up on it until the reveal but, in retrospect, the movie does have a lot of clues about it. It's a lot like The Sixth Sense, even. Nobody else interacts with him. Even when he's shouting at that one kid going through the rolodex of possible friends, the kid never acknowledges it. Or him just standing right in the door way as Grandma dances. Or when the receptionist looks at Blue squeezing the girl tight as they all wait for the elevator, and only sees the girl...
What is the twist exactly? I don't care to see it, but I was predicting there was gonna be a twist with Reynolds being her imagination of like her dad that died before she ever knew him or something, but it sounds like her dad is still alive(ish?). Is the twist really just that he's her previously forgotten imaginary friend?
So it's like detective Pikachu except in this case Ryan Reynolds is an imaginary friend/dad rather than a Pikachu/Dad. Lol
I haven't seen Detective Pikachu, are you saying there's a twist where Pikachu turns out to be Justice Smith's dad??
Yeah it's like Justice Smith's Pikachu also has his dad's soul inside him? Like they're in the same body. Idk I only saw it once but it was something like that and at the end he has his dad and Pikachu back and separate again.
The twist is that Mewto was actually the good guy all along. He saved justice smiths dad after he was fatally injured in a car crash caused by some evil ninjas, by psychically implanting his mind/soul/whatever into his Pikachu
Bad people doing bad experiments on Mewtwo leads to the soul of Smith's police captain father get sent inside his Pikachu, it's somewhat rationally explained in the movie. It's pretty good IMHO.
There isn't a twist. Calvin says very early on that Bea used to see him all the time when she was little. This is followed by Blue, who's super obsessed with kids remembering their IFs, commenting that Bea's finally remembered.
The movie's not about twists. It's about a girl who's been through a lot of shit and tried to grow up too fast, and the journey of her learning how to have fun again. Her realization that Calvin is her IF is simply a payoff to the running theme that people need their imagination more than ever when they get older and life gets hard. It's her realization that Calvin only appeared to her because she needed him. Now they're parting ways because she doesn't need him anymore, at least for right now. This payoff wouldn't work if he told her directly at the beginning who he was, but they very heavy-handedly hinted at it to the audience. The problem is that they were hinting to an audience that apparently can't pick up on subtext without having their hands held.
Yep that’s the exact twist lol
I really thought he was gonna be her IF based on her dad who died years back, and she has to learn to let him go
I thought the same exact thing after seeing the trailer. It would’ve made for a better movie, and would’ve made more sense with him being a human and the other IFs being cartoons.
But then it turns out John Krasinki is in this movie and plays the dad. I actually thought for a minute that Ryan Reynolds was gonna be the Dad’s lost IF.
I knew the twist was coming, I predicted it miles ahead, but I still sobbed despite being a 30 year old. I don't think the point of the movie was that it was supposed to be hush-hush and concealed, the point of the movie is that it still makes you reconnect with your inner child despite the obvious flaws in writing.
I had a rough time with this one. I was very curious to see what Krasinski did after basically handing Paramount a profitable franchise he made out of nothing and I gotta say, this was a huge miss. Sickeningly cutesy, lacking in fun, convoluted story, full of unearned emotional beats. It's actually wild that the guy who directed A Quiet Place, which is specifically so good at conveying stakes and information visually, directed this mess.
I have nothing against Krasinski, I am after all of the Office generation, but the second he showed up in this I was immediately sick of him. He thinks he's a real life Pixar dad, I just wanted to slap his character and beg him to take anything seriously. His daughter's whole thing is she's not a kid anymore don't treat her like one, and Krasinski is like "You see, I've got a big broken heart :( but the doctor is gonna fix me up! :)"
I still have no idea what was wrong with him, what happened to his wife, or if he was ever really in any danger. Did anyone else notice towards the end no one actually says he's in bad condition? Grandma says "I'm sure he's fine I'll explain in the car" then they get there and the nurse says he just needs some rest, but the scene is played like she's waking him up from the brink of death. It's very strange and this movie is full of similar tonal miscalculations. Similar to how his character can't help but treat Bea like a child, I felt like this movie treated me like a child even after it starts focusing on adults (there's literally two children in this entire movie including the protag.)
There is one very cool and energetic "use your imagination scene" that I'll give it up for, but even that is very strangely toned. She's taken to this big mansion/boarding school for imaginary friends whose kids have outgrown them and there's this "chosen one" vibe where she's the only one who can see them all and help place them with other kids. Ryan Reynolds is introducing her to all this but it's clear he hates being there, and when the boss of the IFs tells her she can change things with her imagination Reynolds starts to run away and she basically tortures him by making every door he opens lead to another insane setting. It's like this big choreographed musical dance number and it's definitely the most interesting part of the movie, but it's got this strange feeling that they're being cruel to Reynolds and like slowly chasing him through these multiverses and forcing him to perform. It was just weird!
I have to talk about the twists. I wouldn't say this movie is predictable even though it uses some of the most obvious turns in the book, but I wouldn't have predicted it because they are insane in this context. The ultimate twist is that Ryan Reynolds himself, despite being a human among all cartoon IFs, is Bea's forgotten IF from her childhood spent at that house. This is revealed in one of the most miscalculated things I've ever seen which is a pan up to Ryan Reynolds wearing an oversized purple felt Wonka-esque clown suit and holding a balloon flower with this maddening smile on his face. He's trying to be sincere but Reynolds is only sincere if he can say what's really on his mind and this movie is not the place for that, so it reeks of artifice and irony. I can't imagine someone thinking this was a good idea, but maybe I just don't have childlike wonder or whatever this movie is trying to prey upon.
More importantly, this twist implies that our 12-year-old protagonist has been walking around New York City totally alone (the grandmother in this movie is one of the most absent caretakers I've seen in a while) talking to walls and sneaking around offices eating croissants. I don't think even Krasinski knows what was really supposed to be happening in this movie and what is all happening in this girl's head while she wanders around this hospital stopping to see her dad for 30 seconds at a time. The whole emotional arc of this movie is her dealing with her grief and with her father undergoing surgery after her mom died? somehow? But honestly her and her dad seem totally fine. She's just walking around this hospital making friends and her dad is like yeah I'm gonna be totally fine and he's just like wearing his normal cardigan and reading a book whenever she pops in. Their emotional climax in this movie is totally unearned.
The best thing about IF is trying to pick out all the random voice actors they got for the IFs. The list is actually kinda nuts. Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Steve Carell are the main two but there's Sam Rockwell, George Clooney, Bradley Cooper, Louis Gosset Jr, Emily Blunt, Blake Lively, Maya Rudolph, Christopher Meloni, Richard Jenkins, John Stewart. Not hard to do when you just need 10 lines of dialogue from them but it does feel like Krasinski was so interested in not being the horror guy that he called in every favor to pump up this movie, but the writing is just tropey and derivative and at times nonsensical. He wanted to do live action Pixar but forgot that writing comes first there. 3/10 for me.
r/reviewsbyboner
Oh my gosh the nurse and kid when Krasinski is doing his obnoxious banter! I love when actor-director vanity projects have scenes of people standing around laughing and celebrating how great the actor-director is
Yes as if the nurse wouldn't be like, "Sir, please, that is medical equipment."
“Quit the bullshit Jeff! “
not heard
It just screamed “I AM SOOOO DAAAM FUNNY!!”
Yeah that scene was definitely cringey
This part annoyed me a lot. I'm sitting there like, "Wait, isn't he just asleep?" And he was.
And that whole random musical number that the girl just kicks into out of nowhere is another tonal shift. My guess is it was supposed to symbolize her embracing her childhood after so many "I'm not a kid" lines but, like you said, one moment Ryan's character is showing her around, then the whole chase-down sequence, and then suddenly she breaks into dance. Huh?
I think in retrospect, this is the biggest issue, it just felt like a lot of sentimental scenes jumbled together, and the tone just threw everything off. Not to mention there’s no real laugh out loud moments aside from Carrell every once in a while.
I think it’s a fine kids film and can be a classic in its own way for Gen-Z/Alpha… but it’s missing the mark in a lot of other areas.
The mom clearly died of cancer and the dad somehow had to go through heart surgery, it’s not THAT confusing. It is a little odd why they have to live elsewhere but only come to live with grandma in NYC for medical condition. But yeah it’s not THAT odd either
Another aspect to consider is you’re viewing the events through Bea’s eyes. You only have the knowledge she has. When she was young, she only saw her mom getting sick, not knowing what it was (clearly cancer). I imagine she also doesn’t have all the info on what was wrong with her dad, only that it was his heart. Her grandma should have had more information, but a child who has already lost a parent is going to be terrified to lose their other in a hospital.
Early in the movie, I realized he was laying out the events through her eyes and that’s how I tried to watch it.
Kind of reminded me of My Neighbor Totoro in that regard since how the mother was sick was never explained. Plus a few other parallels.
I’m gonna be that guy and say: Paramount, not Universal, did A Quiet Place, so he’s keeping that relationship going with this movie…for better or worse!
Ah my b I misremembered
He had to have some major help on Quiet Place part II right? At least there was a solid, coherent story written there.
This one was all over the place. I flat out refuse to believe he went from having 2 co-writers on Quiet Place 1 to doing it himself on Part II and this one.
Did he have a concussion between the 2 movies? Is it just typical Hollywood hubris and he's getting high off his flatulence?
Anyway, pizza's ready and my wife is waiting in the car.
1/5 stars
One miss doesn't automatically negate a director's more acclaimed past work. By that logic, people should've written off Spielberg after 1941 or Scorcese after New York, New York bombed.
Yeah I have zero clue what was wrong with him especially at the end. I think he was meant to be in a coma there?? But the nurse was just so casual in saying he was asleep. If he was in a coma she should’ve been a little more serious. Just an odd film all around
He was recovering from surgery. She was worried he'd die because the last time she was in that hospital, her mother died. She was overreacting because she was scared. He was very drowsy, and he came around just enough to say he loved her.
It's really not a plot hole.
I thought this was on purpose to put the audience in the mindset of a child. You don't entirely know what's going on or how serious things may or not be...you're just a kid trying to put the pieces together based off of what the adults around you are telling you. And adults are always trying to make you NOT worry, and when you're 12, you're starting to get old enough to understand that adults will try to shield you from pain and stress.
They really have pulled the “let’s have Brad Pitt play an invisible character in a Ryan Reynolds movie with no lines” gag twice now.
He's actually in all of Ryan's movies, just usually uncredited.
What character did Brad Pitt play? Keith? Lol
Yes, that is correct!
In the end credits it said “Introducing Brad Pitt as Keith” 😂