What started as a normal day for me and my family going for a scoop of ice cream soon led to a “What if?” moment. 

While going out to eat ice cream with my family one sunday afternoon  I noticed a promotion on the Baskin Robbins menu promoting “IF”, two signature flavors to represent main characters from the movie. One looked like blue ice cream with some sprinkles, Blue raspberry with cotton candy  and the other looked like red with cookie dough strawberry with cream . 

I didn’t notice the promotion until after ordering ice cream, but seeing the imaginary friend inspired ice cream on the menu, I felt the need to see the movie. 

What if I watched “IF”? Would I enjoy it or would I dislike it? 

The year of 2024 has had a lot of great titles dropping into theaters like “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire”, “Road House”, and “Kung Fu Panda 4”. “IF” is  a great addition to this selection of titles, more for the emotion it brings than the actual humor.

“IF” is a family/comedy movie directed by John Kranaski. There have been a lot of mixed reviews when it comes to the movie, if people love it then they love it, when they hate it they hate it .

For some, the movie didn’t seem to click as something exciting at first  TikTok user Jeremiah For said, “Going into it, I didn’t seem as excited, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, it’s a great movie.” 

For others they had a questionable experience.  @StoneMedicalMovieMan on TikTok said, “A kid started sobbing at the movie theater, the idea of IF is great but the execution is gonna make people mad. He possibly said this because Children would be aware that they might outgrow their Imaginary friend. At first, I didn’t really enjoy the movie, but then I started to give it a shot and actually paid attention and I really enjoyed it. It’s worth giving it a shot. 

At first glance, “IF” seems like a child’s movie based on the main character Bea (Cailey Fleming) being a little kid. Bea is a young girl whose parents are having a hard time which leads to her discovering she has the ability to see all lost imaginary friends, not just her own. 

Fleming’s acting as Bea was great, she played off her role of being a child with a huge imagination very well, bringing in a positive spirit. Each IF is a figment of imagination created by kids based on their level of imagination. 

As the children grow old, their imaginations seem to fade away leaving their IFs in the past. This leads to the creation of characters in the movie, each with their own characteristics like Blue (a big hairy beast), S-Dog (a superhero dog) and Cosmo (a set of eyes with a trenchcoat and a hat). There were plenty of more IFs through the film which all lacked purpose because their original owners grew up. 

As the movie progresses, Bea is accompanied by Cal (Ryan Reynolds) on her journey to connect Imaginary friends with children to give them a purpose. 

So in “IF”, children weren’t the only viewers Kranaski was aiming for while creating this movie. I felt reconnected with my inner child. It made me start remembering my own childhood, even though I’m still young. 

When I was 6, I would daydream of being a Marine with my imaginary friend who was a talking weiner dog named Captain Schnitzel, so watching the movie helped me remember that moment of my childhood that was fun. I believe a lot of adults will be able to reconnect with their inner child while watching this movie.

I think no matter how old we grow, I believe we should still have parts of our child because we may grow old but our inner child still exists, so Kranaski had a great idea for entertainment when bringing imaginary friends into a movie. 

Throughout the film the happiness, and emotions were kicking in, so they did a great job on the acting and the story line. 

An area the movie could’ve done better in has to be comedy. The effort was there, but some jokes felt repetitive in the way of not being said over and over again but said the same, especially having a comedian like Ryan Reynolds who’s a comedian in various titles they could’ve done better on the jokes. I felt like “ HOME “  a 2015 family/comedy movie and “IF”  had identical aspects in comedy. Kranaski could’ve been more original when it came to directing this Film  

Overall this film was decent, the way the story played out and the acting was all there, there weren’t any aspects that didn’t make sense. This is definitely a twist in John Krasinski’s career jumping from his 2018 horror movie, “A Quiet Place.” 

I’d recommend you to go watch this film. It really touches hearts and snaps back memories. This movie attracts everyone of every age group, not just kids. I’d watch this movie again. I enjoyed watching this film and wil indeed watch it again once it drops on a streaming app

No doubt it’s an enjoyable movie to watch with friends or family or even if you wanna stay home alone and enjoy a blue, blue raspberry ice cream while watching it. It’s definitely a title that’s interesting.