IF review – imaginary friends reunited in a kid-pleasing

IF review – imaginary friends reunited in a kid-pleasing live-action fantasy

Actor-director John Krasinski’s animated tale of an anxious tween and her make-believe buddies is not in Pixar’s league, but it boasts a heartfelt sweetness and an engaging young star

What if imaginary friends didn’t vanish into the murk of forgotten memories as soon as the child who conjured them grew up? What if the invisible bestie lingered on, trying hard not to be wounded by the rejection and waiting in vain to be of use once more? If that sounds familiar, that’s because it is. The central premise of American actor-director John Krasinski’s IF – his first family film after the horror movie double of A Quiet Place and its sequel – is borrowed from several Pixar films.

There’s an obvious parallel with the subplot of Bing Bong in Inside Out. A heartbreakingly cheerful pink cat/elephant/dolphin mashup in a too-small top hat, Bing Bong is the long-discarded imaginary friend who still lurks in the subconscious of Riley, and who’ll do anything, even sacrifice himself, for the girl who dreamed him into existence. But there’s also an almost too close for comfort overlap with Toy Story, and the idea of an intensity in a child’s imagination that is potent enough to breathe life into inanimate objects, and of the bruising transience of the period in infancy in which disbelief is fully suspended and magic is real.