IF (PG, 105 minutes)
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3 stars
After hits with A Quiet Place and its sequel, writer-director-star John Krasinski is back with an entirely different type of film.
Steering clear of the horror elements of his two previous endeavours (which is a good thing, as we already got a horror movie about an imaginary friend in 2024 with Jeff Wadlow's Imaginary and it wasn't that great), Krasinski has entered family movie territory with IF.
IF - which stands for both Imaginary Friend and a sort of 'what if?' idea - follows a 12-year-old girl called Bea (a promising Cailey Fleming, The Walking Dead) who wants to be considered a grown-up, not a kid.
She's already gone through a lot in her dozen years, with her mother dying and her father (Krasinski) in hospital for a vague condition. It's never clear why the father is in hospital - he says "I'm not sick, I'm just broken", and references a broken heart on his shirt, but if it's a mental health stay, a later reference to surgery doesn't make a lot of sense.
While her dad is hospitalised, Bea is staying with her grandmother, the ever delightful Fiona Shaw (Killing Eve), a place where she spent a lot of time when she was younger.
It's at this Brooklyn apartment building that she spots Cal (Ryan Reynolds) and a young girl she thinks she can be friends with. But, as it turns out, it's not a young girl, but an imaginary friend in the form of a black-and-white ballerina named Blossom (Phoebe Waller-Bridge).
Blossom, it turns out, is not the last imaginary friend she'll encounter, and she's soon introduced to Blue, a Grimace-looking purple gentle giant voiced by Steve Carell.
Blue is adorable and Cal and Blossom have been trying to find him a new kid, much like finding a rescue dog a new family. As it happens, all the imaginary friends Bea encounters were dreamt up by kids who have grown up or no longer need them.
Soon enough Bea is working with the grouchy Cal and co to find new kids for a whole retirement village worth of imaginary friends.
Half the fun of this film, for the adults at least, is trying to place the voices of each of these inventive and delightfully designed animated characters.
Krasinski has called in all his buddies to fill out the voice cast, including wife Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, George Clooney, Brad Pitt (though his "role" is closer to his appearance in Reynolds' Deadpool 2), Amy Schumer, Louis Gossett Jr, Maya Rudolph, Sam Rockwell and plenty more.
IF serves as one of Gossett Jr's final roles, releasing after his death in late March, and the film features a sweet tribute to him after the credits.
There's lots of fun antics and easy laughs with the imaginary friends for the kids to enjoy, while the overarching story about growing up and healing your inner child might land more successfully with the parents.
The visual effects are good, and it always feels like the human cast are actually interacting with their "imaginary" castmates.
The script could be a little tighter, however - like the question of his character's malady, Krasinski hasn't written a flawless script, but most of the emotion is there, if not all threads of the plot.
Everyone gives strong and dedicated performances, and Fleming really does quite a remarkable job considering she's carrying the majority of the film with few actual human scene partners.
The score from Oscar winner and Disney regular Michael Giacchino is lovely and aids a lot in crafting the upbeat and kid-friendly tone.
