When I first read about this movie, it was about how John Krasinki, the director who also plays the father of the protagonist Bea (Cailey Fleming), had trouble finding movies that were made for kids his kids’ age, no longer interested in princess stories and not old enough yet for adult movies, something in between, which transcended the sensibilities of young kids and captured the growing pains of becoming a young adult:
“‘The idea came from them,’ he said. ‘I would stand in doorways for hours watching these girls just go into a totally different space. They were going to this magical world that we weren’t invited to.’
‘I wanted to do a movie for my kids, forever. They were not only so joyful, but they were so authentic. They were so brave and fearless in what they were doing,’ he added.
Then the pandemic hit. He said he saw their lights start to dwindle a little bit.
‘They started to let the real world in and they started imagining a little bit less. I said, ‘Stop. This is it. I have to write the movie right now to show them that the magical world that they created, they can always go back to it.'”
Which is exactly what the movie is about, really, the inner child that lives within all of us, and if you have heard that aphorism before, you basically will be disappointed by the fact that the movie finds nothing to add to that trite observation about growing up and dealing with the problems of growing older, not getting what you expected, and death.
Speaking of death, the movie performs a kind of lazy jiu jitsu move early on by killing off Bea’s mom and putting her father back in the same hospital for a different procedure that could be potentially life-threatening. And for a movie that has absolutely no stakes whatsoever, it’s pretty clean as far as plot murders go. She’s youthful, happy, and then BAM bald and dead.
Just once I want to see the movie about someone going through chemo in the morning and then trying to make it to the bar for a date while adjusting their wig correctly, and then navigating how to have sex without having to explain the entire history of their cancer diagnosis, or going to a meeting with other cancer survivors and quietly judging their ability to cope based on how much less dire their condition is. I’d really prefer to watch the meet cute for the woman who didn’t think she was going to have children after getting diagnosed and then finding the man/woman?/couple? of her dreams and having to go through all the wildness of making a family while also rushing things and recovering. But alas, we’re in Krasinki’s lazily written reason for being in a hospital for what seems like too many days before minor surgery (why exactly is he under observation for like a week before they do anything to him???).
The story follows Bea as she goes through an existential crisis, worrying if she will be orphaned by her father after already enduring the loss of her mother to cancer. The trauma triggers her ability to see not just her own imaginary friend (“IF”) from her youth but ALL of them (or most? unclear!), and–even more novel!–her IF has decided to start a matchmaking agency to set up IFs with new kids now that they are no longer needed by their former kids. If you understand that this isn’t going to work, you, like me, have watched the 1999 Disney television movie “Don’t Look Under the Bed” and it probably fucked you up real good too.
That being the case, you are likely going to be upset with the rest of this movie, which glides from being a film that has a moderately interesting problem to solve to a movie which is mostly interested in some pretty maudlin sequences in which old people stress over some petty shit and indulge in the barest bit of self care in order to blow off steam.
IF isn’t great, mostly it’s just kind of indescribably manipulative. Krasinki gives himself the best lines and Ryan Reynolds’s caustic sarcasm never really explains itself. There doesn’t seem to be a dark side to the rejection of IFs besides a threat that never (im)materializes (HA!) for anyone that matters.
If you’re interested in a movie for tweens that will actually get a little dark and teach you not to spurn your imaginary friends, please check out the Under Your Bed movie cited above.
