Development of the film began in 2019, with Krasinski set to write and direct and Reynolds attached to star. The rest of the cast joined between October 2021 and January 2022, and filming took place inNew York City between August of that year and May 2023.IF was theatrically released byParamount Pictures in the United States on May 17, 2024. The film received mixed reviews from critics and grossed over $190.3 million against a budget of $110 million.
12-year-old Bea moves into her grandmother Margaret's apartment in New York while her father waits for heart surgery in the same hospital where her mother died of cancer years earlier. One night, Bea sees an unfamiliar creature and follows it back to her grandmother's building.
The next day, Bea sees it again, accompanied by a man. She follows them to a nearby house where the man, Cal, retrieves a large furry purple creature named Blue. Bea also meets the other creature, a butterfly-like being named Blossom, and faints.
Bea awakens in Cal's apartment, where she learns that he has been working withimaginary friends (or IFs) to place them with new children as their original creators have grown up and forgotten them, and they will soon disappear. Initially reluctant, she eventually decides to help Cal.
The next day, Cal takes Bea to Memory Lane Retirement Home, a retirement community for IFs housed underneath a swing ride inConey Island. An elderly teddy bear and the head of the facility named Lewis inspires her to use her imagination to redesign the facility, much to the chagrin of Cal. Bea tries to match one of the IFs with Benjamin, a young patient at the hospital, but he is unable to see any of them. Lewis suggests to Bea that maybe IFs do not need new kids, but rather to reunite with their old ones.
Talking with her grandmother, Bea sees a photo of her as a young dancer and recognizes Blossom in the background. Realizing she was her grandmother's IF, she decides to test Lewis' idea. Playing one of her grandmother's records inspires Margaret to dance, and she remembers Blossom, instilling Bea with hope.
Following a tip, Bea, Cal, and Blue find Blue's original kid Jeremy, now a grown man trying to launch a business. With Bea's help, Jeremy remembers Blue, who gives him the confidence he needs for a business presentation.
That evening, Bea arrives at Margaret's, who frantically informs her granddaughter that there has been a complication with her father's treatment. Comforted by Cal, Bea says she does not want to say goodbye to her dad, so he suggests she tell him a story instead.
At the hospital, Bea tells her unresponsive father a story about how she was pushing herself to act like a grown-up when she is just a child who still needs her father. She begins to cry while telling it, feeling that she might lose him too. However, he wakes up, much to her relief, and they hug. When Bea goes outside his hospital room, she sees that all of the IFs, who had accompanied her to the hospital, are gone.
Returning to her grandmother's building, Bea goes to thank Cal only to discover that the door to his apartment opens into an old storage room, as revealed by the landlady. After her dad is released from the hospital, he and Bea pack up to go home. During this, Bea realizes from an old picture she painted that Cal is actually her own IF, whom she had forgotten after her mother's death. Bea rushes to Cal's room and thanks him for helping, telling him she will always need him. This allows her to see Cal and the IFs again, and they reunite one last time.
Sometime later, Cal continues reuniting the IFs with their now grown-up creators, and Benjamin meets his IF, a cartoonish, bespectacled doctor dragon with similar injuries.
The film's end credits includeBrad Pitt as Keith, an invisible IF with no lines, understood to be just offscreen when other characters trip over him. Pitt's credit is a reference to his cameo asVanisher inDeadpool 2 (2018), co-starring Reynolds.[17][18] The film is dedicated to Gossett Jr., who died before its release.[19]
IF was released byParamount Pictures in the United States on May 17, 2024,[22] after its originally scheduled release date of November 17, 2023 was first pushed to May 24, 2024, and then shifted forward by one week.[23]
The film was released on digital platforms byParamount Home Entertainment on June 18, 2024.[24] It began streaming onParamount+ on July 9, 2024,[25] and was released on Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD on August 13, 2024.[24]
IF grossed $111.1 million in the United States andCanada, and $79.2 million in other territories, for a total of $190.3 million worldwide.[4][3]Variety estimated the film would need to gross $275 million worldwide in order to break-even.[26]
In the United States and Canada,IF was released alongsideThe Strangers: Chapter 1 andBack to Black, and was originally projected to gross around $40 million from 4,041 theaters in its opening weekend.[27] After making $10.3 million on its first day (including $1.8 million from Thursday night previews), weekend estimates were lowered to $30 million. It went on to debut to $33.7 million, topping the box office.[28] In its second weekend, the film made $16.8 million (a drop of -53%), finishing third behind newcomersFuriosa: A Mad Max Saga andThe Garfield Movie.[29] In France, the film made $3.3 million during its opening weekend in 621 cinemas.[4]
On thereview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, 50% of 207 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.8/10. The website's consensus reads: "A sweet ode to rediscovering one's inner child,IF largely works as old-fashioned family entertainment despite an occasionally unfocused and unnecessarily complicated plot."[30]Metacritic, which uses aweighted average, assigned the film a score of 46 out of 100, based on 39 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[31] Audiences polled byCinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale, while those polled byPostTrak gave it an 84% overall positive score, with 64% saying they would definitely recommend it.[28]
Adrian Horton ofThe Guardian awarded the film 3 out of 5 stars, writing that it "checks the boxes" on the elements of a family-friendly movie, but also noting that it does not "fully conjure the magic" of other films in the genre.[32] Another mixed review was published onNPR byBob Mondello, who wrote that "mostly the filmmakers detour, decorate and digitize their story rather than telling it, and that doesn't mesh well with the real-world stuff — dad's surgery, for instance, and Bea's wandering all over Brooklyn without her grandma seeming to notice. And yes, I know:IF is a kid-flick, but it still needs grounding. We're in Brooklyn, notWilly Wonkaland."[33]RogerEbert.com reviewer Clint Worthington called the film "a well-intentioned misfire".[34]
Tomris Laffly ofVariety wrote that the movie was "in desperate need of some coherent world-building", while praising the performance of Cailey Fleming in the lead role.[35] In a more negative review forThe Hollywood Reporter,Frank Scheck criticised the film as "plagued by significant tonal shifts and pacing issues".[36]
Noah Berlatsky ofChicago Reader was even more dismissive, stating, "IF makes you wish you were watching some other movie. (...) There's a fine line between the whimsical dream logic of Roald Dahl and irritating, incoherent nonsense. Director John Krasinski's new kids filmIF is nowhere near that line. Despite the best efforts of the extremely talented child actor Cailey Fleming,IF makes no sense, narratively, emotionally, or visually."[37]
Several critics noted that the film shares some similarities with theCartoon Network animated seriesFoster's Home for Imaginary Friends, which itself featured an orphanage that takes care of imaginary friends after their kids outgrow them and they leave after other children adopt them.[h]
_poster_2.jpg)
