IF (2024)

IF is a 2024 American live-action animated fantasy comedy film written, produced, and directed by John Krasinski. The film features an ensemble cast that includes Cailey Fleming, Ryan Reynolds, Krasinski, Fiona Shaw, Alan Kim, and Liza Colón-Zayas, along with the voices of Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Louis Gossett Jr., and Steve Carell. Its plot follows a young girl and her neighbor who find themselves able to see imaginary friends.

IF was theatrically released by Paramount Pictures in France on May 8, 2024, and later in the United States on May 17, 2024. The film received mixed reviews from critics and has grossed $5.5 million worldwide.

Storyline

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 years earlier. One night, Bea sees an unfamiliar creature and follows it back to her grandmother's building. The next day, she 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 with imaginary friends (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 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 in Coney Island. An elderly teddy bear and the head of the facility named Lewis inspires her to use her imagination to redesign the facility. 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 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 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, Margaret informs Bea 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. He wakes up, much to her relief. When Bea exits his hospital room, 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. After her dad is released from the hospital, he and Bea pack to go home. During this, Bea realizes from an old picture she painted that Cal is 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 grown-up creators, and Benjamin meets his IF, a cartoonish, bespectacled doctor dragon with similar injuries.