IF only I had skipped this movie

(another scathing review, this time of a movie I wish I hadn’t seen)

This bear would also rather not have seen that movie (Photo by Alex Muromtsev on Unsplash)

“IF” poses itself as the kind of film we long for: an Up, an Inside-Out, a Finding Nemo. The trailer suggests that maybe the film will be fast-paced and clever, with laugh-out-loud moments and tear-jerking scenes that not only warm your heart but remind us all why we are alive. Unfortunately, the actual movie fails at all of its lofty goals, much like the imaginary friends that are the nouns that create the acronym (explicitly stated by the cardboard characters: “Imaginary Friend: IF”).

The message of this endlessly dull and bizarrely unfocused film seems to be that adults can overcome real world problems like death, loneliness, joblessness, and heartache, by simply replacing unsatisfying real-world relationships with the imaginary friends they had when they were children.

There is no attempt to explain why nearly all of the imaginary friends in this movie are not age-appropriate besties who embody all the usual longe-for aspects of friendship (loyalty, wisdom, support?) but instead are unstable and/or detrimental cartoon caricatures of personalities that embody weird shapes: like a perpetually burning marshmallow, a wingless butterfly, or a vodka tonic (the film claims that it’s a glass of water with a big square ice cube but we know better). There is no attempt to…