IF Movie Review

14
Aug 24
0

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.

Why did I come to this movie again?

This one looked cute in the previews, so when we saw it streaming, we decided to watch it.

4 of 5

Characters

Bea, the main character, was cute. The actress did a great job of making Bea feel as if she was on the fence and balanced between wanting to still be a kid and needing to be a grown up.

Cal, Ryan Reynolds, was great.

I loved the imaginary friends.

All that being said, I wasn’t terribly invested in any of the characters. Most of the adults felt like idiots, which isn’t my favorite trope.

4 of 5

Did I care what happened?

I kept wondering what the twist was.

The fact that her dad was in the hospital for so long, but mostly in plain clothes, was weird. So I wondered if he was actually dead or something.

I figured there was something more to the Ifs.

4 of 5

Plot Holes

If you’re willing to overlook the non-explanation of pretty much everything in the movie, you won’t care about the plot holes.

4 of 5

How many times did I yawn?

I struggled with the pacing of this movie. The beginning is quite slow, which surprised me. The middle never really got exciting, and the end left me…a little confused.

So I didn’t yawn, but I never really connected with the film. Individula scenes were fun, but linking them together was, in my opinion, lacking.

3 of 5

Cool Factor

I really enjoyed all of the IF characters. I never had an imaginary friend (although, according to this movie, if I did I wouldn’t remember anyway) so I really didn’t get that part of it, but I enjoyed seeing what the creatives came up with for the IFs.

The sense of wonder was nice.

4 of 5

The End

While the concept of this film is super fun, it left me with too many questions. I couldn’t reconcile the twist with what had happened.

I always think about The Sixth Sense, and the moment I really figured out what was going on in that film. At that second, my mind raced back through the movie to pick out the things I’d interpreted wrong.

I didn’t have that moment in IF. It was more like…huh? Uh. Okay. Sure. That may as well happen.

3 of 5

Overall Enjoyment

I wanted to love this story, but I came away with my writing brain trying to reconcile the twist with the rest of the show, and I never could settle into it.

We don’t have kids, and it would be interesting to see if a child would love this film or not. I might have really dug it in elementary school.

4 of 5

Total: 30