Over the weekend, I went to see IF with my family. IF is a bittersweet tale about a preteen girl who tries to force herself to grow up too fast and learns how to reconnect with her childhood self by assisting the IFs (imaginary friends) in reconnecting with their grown-up children.
The movie begins by showing a montage of a young version of Bea playing with her mother, father, and grandmother at her grandmother’s apartment in New York.
These clips show the creative and outgoing side of Bea’s childhood self, alongside hints of her mother’s deteriorating health. As the movie reaches the present time, her mother has already passed, and Bea has returned to stay with her grandmother while her father undergoes an operation at the same hospital.
During her stay, Bea meets another person living in the building named Cal, who can assist imaginary friends in finding homes. Despite seeming distant from and irritated with the IF presence and his job, Cal continues to work with the Memory Lane Retirement Home to try and find IF new kids.
However, once Bea joins the workforce, that job changes to rekindling the forgotten memories and connections between an IF and their grow-up creator.
Because no matter how grown-up someone may be, they can always use a friend.
Despite the colorful and eye-catching movie, I believe it focused a bit more on Bea herself and the trauma of losing someone again rather than IFs. While watching the film, I did not feel attached to my imaginary friends. They were comedic and quirky, but the focus was more on Bea’s relationship with her father, the subplot of her father’s procedure approaching, and Bea and Cal’s argumentative relationship.
The movie built up these attachments to the human characters very well. My family members and I were close to tears at one point in the film, and the twist toward the end was unexpected. However, I also felt the movie did not balance pacing very well and did not focus on the IFs as much as it could or should have.
I left the movie feeling like more could have been done to help me sympathize with the imaginary friends and root for them on their journeys to connect with their person.
Overall, IF is a feel-good experience with splashes of fantasy and comedy to brighten the overall themes of death, sickness, and abandonment.
It portrays the journey of losing someone and working through grief in a relatable and comfortable way for children to understand. Despite that, it is very slow-building and does not focus as much on the rehoming of the IFs as I was expecting going into the movie.
For these reasons, I give the movie an eight out of 10.