If You Can Imagine ‘IF,’ the IFs Will Come

May 16, 2024

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If, if, if, uh… (CREDIT: Paramount Pictures)

Starring: Cailey Fleming, Ryan Reynolds, John Krasinski, Fiona Shaw, Alan Kim, Steve Carell, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Liza Colón-Zayas, Bobby Moynihan, Louis Gosset Jr., Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Maya Rudolph, Jon Stewart, Sam Rockwell, Sebastian Maniscalco, Christopher Meloni, Awkwafina, Richard Jenkins, Blake Lively, George Clooney, Matthew Rhys, Bradley Cooper, Amy Schumer, Keegan-Michael Key

Director: John Krasinski

Running Time: 104 Minutes

Rating: PG for Mild Potty Humor and Imaginary Nudity

Release Date: May 17, 2024 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Ever since her mom died, 12-year-old Bea (Cailey Fleming) has pretty much forgotten how to have fun. It certainly doesn’t help that her dad (John Krasinski) is about to undergo heart surgery, though he tries to maintain her childlike wonder with his constant magic tricks and corny gags. While staying at the NYC apartment of her grandmother (Fiona Shaw), she encounters a couple of cartoon characters, as well as their seemingly human partner named Cal (Ryan Reynolds). As it turns out, they’re imaginary friends (or IFs, as they like to be abbreviated), and it’s highly unusual for someone of Bea’s age to be able to see them. But she could really use the power of imagination right now. Or maybe, these supernatural hypothetical creatures could really use the power of Bea right now.

What Made an Impression?: Tina Turner-ing Back the Clock: Baa eventually meets a whole crew of IFs in their hideaway on the Coney Island boardwalk. The encounter is fueled by IF‘s big set piece: an imagination-fueled dance number set to Tina Turner’s 1984 hit “Better Be Good to Me.” Honestly, it’s quite possibly my favorite cinematic choreography since Napoleon Dynamite let loose to some Jamiroquai 20 years ago. If you told me that IF was really just writer-director Krasinski’s excuse to make an entire movie around his own unique tribute to Turner, I would buy it. Such a film did not have to be about imaginary friends, but as it is, it worked out quite swimmingly.
Imaginary Friends, Real Motivation: I wasn’t expecting to tear up at IF, as all indications pointed to it being a simple sugar rush. But its final act lays its thesis out for the taking. As Bea’s journey would have it, imaginary friends aren’t mere fake companions; instead, they’re representations of our innermost desires. We might not be able to “see” them anymore after we grow up, but remaining in touch with them is essential to accomplish our dreams. In that sense, they’re essentially embodiments of everyone’s unique motivations. So the next time you look at a childhood photo or drawing that makes you suddenly remember a big purple monster or a talking ice cube, roll with it. A satisfying life might just depend on it.

IF is Recommended If You Like: Inside Out, Humorless kid protagonists, Tina Turner

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 IFs

This Is a Movie Review: ‘Snatched’ is a Miscalculated Vacation in More Ways Than One

May 12, 2017

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This review was originally published on News Cult in May 2017.

Starring: Amy Schumer, Goldie Hawn, Ike Barinholtz, Wanda Sykes, Joan Cusack

Director: Jonathan Levine

Running Time: 97 Minutes

Rating: R for Sloppy Partying and Surprisingly Deadly Slapstick

Release Date: May 12, 2017

Amy Schumer’s acting instincts dictate that she make her characters immature to the point of straining as much credulity as possible. She has no time for the trope of the professionally successful, but emotionally unstable woman. Instead, everything spirals out of control for her all at once, although that implies that things were ever in control in the first place. For Snatched’s woman-child protagonist Emily Middleton, the latter is almost certainly not the case. After losing her job and her boyfriend, she crawls back into the warm embrace back home with mom Linda (Goldie Hawn), where she can spill ice cream on her shirt and whine like a teenager. This is the Platonic ideal – or Platonic nadir, as it were – of a Schumer performance. How Emily was ever able to move out on her own is a mystery.

Linda’s troubles are much less extreme and thus more relatable. In the decades since separating from her husband, she has never gone back to dating, or even really left the house for that matter. So when her daughter insists that they travel to Ecuador together, she is unsurprisingly hesitant, partly because she is so scared to let loose, but perhaps even more so because she knows better than anyone that following Emily only leads to trouble. Even if the premise were not right in the title, it would be clear so quickly that she is the type of person who would skip right into a kidnapping scam. That Emily and Linda survive mostly unscathed makes them either improbably lucky or impossibly superhuman; both options are exhausting after an hour and a half.

While Schumer commits too hard to being pathetic, there is fun to be had among the supporting performances, where caricatures can be more functional. Wanda Sykes gets the majority of the zingers as an outgoing fellow traveler who recognizes the very real dangers of kidnapping, despite her tenuous grasp of statistics. As Sykes’ platonic life partner, Joan Cusack is weirdly perfectly cast in a completely silent role. And Christopher Meloni is the biggest highlight as an adventurer in way over his head, demonstrating that joie de vivre is often essential to making incompetence sing on screen. Schumer could take some pointers from him, though I suspect she enjoys being stuck in the muck.

Snatched is Recommended If You Like: Women behaving just as badly as men-children, Gene the Chef from Wet Hot American Summer

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Tits Out

This Is a (Quickie) Movie Review: The Diary of a Teenage Girl

September 2, 2015

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diary-of-a-teenage-girl

The Diary of a Teenage Girl features an open-minded sexual awakening, but it is complicated by happening via an affair. As Minnie, Bel Powley is refreshingly frank and straightforward in bringing to life female sexual desire. But it is hard to be thrilled by her story. She is sleeping with her mother’s boyfriend, and she is way too immature and insecure to deal with the situation. This puts the viewer in a fundamentally vexing position, wanting to cheer the sex positivity but recognizing the harm in the main relationships.

Then there’s Christopher Meloni as Minnie’s ex-stepfather Pascal. He remains in contact with Minnie and her sister, disapproving of the bohemian San Francisco lifestyle their mother (Kristen Wiig) is raising them in. He is a straight edge, but there is a slight ironic veneer to Meloni’s performance. He likes to keep it cool, but he can lose his patience, and when he does so, he is amusingly insane. That is to say, he is not too far removed from his Wet Hot American Summer performance.