As far as I can remember, imaginary friend was something quite alien and abstract to me during my childhood years. As a matter of fact, I came to learn a bit about imaginary friend via one episode of a Disney TV animation series when I was around 10, and I wondered whether I was just an exception. After all, my young autistic mind was already quite busy with reading one book after another (I voraciously absorbed the works of Agatha Christie and Stephen King while occasionally touching those trashy works of Sidney Sheldon, for instance), so I guess I did not feel the need for any kind of imaginary friend to play with.

Therefore, I was ready to open my mind more for John Krasinski’s latest film “IF”, but, sadly, the movie did not engage me much due to a number of glaring flaws in terms of story and characters. While it wants to fly higher with the power of imagination, most of its fantasy scenes somehow feel flat and unimpressive despite a bunch of notable talented people in front of and behind the camera, and, above all, they are not supported by enough gravitas to generate any poignancy. While there is a sense of melancholy around the more realistic part of the movie, this part does not mesh that well with the fantasy part of the story, and the overall result is an unfortunate mishmash of fantasy and melodrama.

The opening part of the movie establishes how its young heroine has hardened her heart during last several years. When her father, played by Krasinski, is going to have a surgery due to his serious heart problem, Bea (Cailey Fleming) is certainly concerned a lot about him, but she chooses to be distant from whatever she is feeling right now. As a girl who was once quite brokenhearted when her mother passed away too early for her and her father, she knows well how painful it can be if her father dies, and she cannot go along that well with how her father tries to cheer her up during her hospital visits.

Anyway, Bea comes to stay in the apartment of her grandmother, who also tries to cheer her up as much as possible. When she gladly shows Bea a bedroom full of Bea’s old childhood stuffs, Bea is not that impressed, and we sense more of the distance between her and her grandmother despite her grandmother’s caring efforts.

Meanwhile, Bea encounters something strange on one day. She notices a weird figure which later goes inside her grandmother’s apartment building, and then she sees this odd entity again on the next day. This time, this figure happens to be with some guy, and Bea watches them quietly entering a certain young girl’s bedroom for handling some urgent matter to deal with.

That guy in question is Cal (Ryan Reynolds), who is running a sort of agency for abandoned imaginary friends (IF) on an apartment right above the apartment of Bea’s grandmother. Cal and his IF assistant Blossom (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) are trying to stop an IF named Blue (Steve Carell) from making a big mistake on that little girl, and Blue reluctantly agrees to leave even though it has been desperate for belonging to any kid to embrace it.

Although she cannot wholly believe what she encounters, Bea soon finds herself delving more into the hidden world of IFs along with Cal, Blossom, and Blue. At one point, Cal shows her a retirement home for abandoned IFs who will be inevitably faded away sooner or later, and we are accordingly served with a group of various IFs who are incidentally voiced by many notable performers ranging from George Clooney and Matt Damon to Richard Jenkins and late Louis Gossett Jr., who sadly passed away early in this year (The movie is one of his last films, by the way).

Once she comes to realize how she can boost the world of IFs via her imagination as shown in the following musical sequence, Bea decides to help Cal and Blossom’s agency more. After seeing how Blossom can be reconnected with its old creator, she subsequently tries to help Blue reconnect with an adult who created it a long time ago, and, what do you know, that turns out to be more successful than expected.

However, Krasinski’ s screenplay only comes to stumble a lot during its second half. While it is surely sincere to the core, it also often fails to balance itself between reality and fantasy, and its characters are rather superficial archetypes without much depth. As a consequence, we do not care that much about the story and characters even when the movie eventually goes for some melodramatic moments as expected.

As the center of the movie, Cailey Fleming acquits herself well while showing considerable potential, and I hope we will see more of her talent during next several years. While Krasinski brings some warmth to his several scenes with Fleming, Fiona Shaw, Alan Kim, and Ryan Reynolds fill their respective spots as required, though Reynolds seems rather strained as trying to distance himself more from that famously (and successfully) vulgar superhero played by him. In case of the voice cast members of the film, Steve Carell and Phoebe Waller-Bridge have some fun with their characters’ goofy side, but many of the other voice cast members just come and go without leaving much impression, and that is another disappointment in the film.

In conclusion, “IF” is a bland letdown despite Krasinski’s sincere efforts for trying something different from his debut feature film “A Quiet Place” (2018) and the following 2020 sequel. Now I wonder whether it would be more effective if it were an animation feature film, and that takes me back to recent Japanese animation film “The Imaginary” (2023), which did a better job of handling the same story subject with more style and imagination. This Japanese animation film is available on Netflix now, and I think you should check it out instead of becoming disappointed with “IF”.