Though the title of this family fantasy stands for “imaginary friends,” the purport of the conditional conjunction lends the film a wistful character that suits its dramatic purposes more adequately. By rights, the plot is a downer. Twelve-year-old Bea (Cailey Fleming) lost her mother some years ago and now her dad (John Krasinski, who also wrote and directed) is about to go under the knife for a heart problem. Living with her over-solicitous grandmother (Fiona Shaw) and bombarded with painfully obvious optimism on the part of her father, Bea is constantly reminded of the precariousness of her future, which gives her anxiety an edge of irritation that feels more realistic than such feelings would normally evoke in this kind of movie; and Krasinski winningly puts over the dark humor of the situation.

But the movie is really concerned with something else entirely. Ryan Reynolds plays Cal, a guy who lives upstairs from grandma and who Bea quickly learns, after hearing all sorts of weird noises and seeing phantom shapes, is a caretaker for imaginary friends who have nowhere to go and nothing to do after their human hosts grow out of their supposed need for them. One of Cal’s tasks is to find new gigs for the IFs, a job he seems temperamentally unsuited for, since he tends to fly off the handle easily; but Bea, intrigued by the vocation, volunteers to assist in the placements and quickly becomes close to the various figments of somebody’s imagination, which range from a big, purple, overzealous hairball named Blue (Steve Carrell), to a ballerina-cum-bumblebee named Blossom (Phoebe Waller-Bridge). Krasinski has great fun exploring this premise and the production design crew comes up with some eye-popping visual ideas to bring the concept to life, including one of the better musical numbers of the year that is meant to present Bea’s own imagination with regard to what she envisions as the ideal retirement home for these creatures. But while the fantasy sequences channel some of the poignancy of the framing story, especially with regard to Bea’s frustration at intitially not being able to successfully understand how kids like her “create” imaginary friends, the two plot strands never come together in a meaningful way.

The obvious problem is that Krasinski had too many good ideas and not enough collaborative input to realize one or the other was good enough for a feature film. As it stands, Bea as a character (not to mention Fleming) is over-extended, since she has to do double work as both an adolescent victim of circumstance and a go-getting figure of youthful entrepreneurship. In the end, the two personalities cancel each other out. 

Opens June 14 in subtitled and dubbed versions in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Shinjuku Wald 9 (03-5369-4955), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

IF home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 Paramount Pictures