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In 1968 Lindsay Anderson wrote and directed an astonishing film called 'If....', starring Malcom McDowell, it was the first film of the Mick Travis Trilogy, which also included O Lucky Man and Britannia Hospital. If.... followed the fortunes of a young man, Mick Travis, in his penultimate year in a English private school as he rebels against the rules and morays of an archaic and out-moded social order of the school and leads a revolution against the establishment culminating in a mass shooting conducted from the roof of the school on Parents day. It's an astonishing film, which leaves you unsettled and mesmerised, mostly thanks to the superlative performance of Malcom McDowell. It's truly ahead of its time and was at the vanguard of a change in cinema.
How times have changed.
Now 56 years later Hollywood have remade it as the John Krasinski written and directed fantasy comedy IF starring Ryan Reynolds, in this modern remake, Malcom McDowell's character Mick Travis has been replaced by a young girl called Bea who can see Imaginary Friends. Bea (Cailey Fleming) is twelve going on 25 who, following the death of her mother through cancer, and the hospitalisation of her father for serious heart surgery has been sent to live with her grandmother (Fiona Shaw). Every day, Bea wanders off with no adult supervision, regardless of the hour, to visit her father for 30 seconds, the local convenience store in the middle of the night, or Coney Island not returning until late at night and at no point does anyone object, especially her gran who seems more concerned that she's eating rather than the fact she's roaming the streets late at night. ANYWAY Bea is deeply troubled, faced with so much grief and emotional stress she's old before her time. However, help is at hand when she stumbles across an black and white bug-eyed Imaginary Friend called Blossom (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), a giant purple thing called Blue (Steve Carell) and a man called Cal (Ryan Reynolds) an angry frustrated ex-clown, who all live upstairs from Bea's nan, when it's convenient to the plot. Turns out Cal is running a foster agency for IFs (Imaginary Friends), who we learn lose their humans when the little brats hit puberty but he's lost his passion for it. Hardly surprising since he's had absolute zero success. Anyway, Bea offers to help and comes up with the incredible idea of re-uniting the orphaned IFs with their original human hosts.
Along the way, heart strings are plucked harder than a Brazilian wax treatment and emotional lessons are learned that will mend all hearts and reveal a supposedly touching secret that you'll guess especially if you've seen M. Night Shamalama-Ding Dong's Sixth Sense.
Basically imagine a live-action remake of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends but with all the magic and humour strip mined out of it and replaced with a button-pushing emotional lessons, homilies, and an over-wrought score and mawkish emotional beats.
Plus all real-life logic and common sense is removed to help the plot drag it's huge purple arse across the finishing line. No one questions a 12 year-old on the streets late at night, as she wanders in and out of a hospital whenever she feels like it, and enters office blocks without ever being stopped. Plus she's prone to seemingly taking to herself in public. This is a massively twee film, that seems strangely devoid of IFs, surely there should be tens of millions rather than the rag-tag dozen or so we get. This is a film with kids in mind and the younger ones will probably enjoy it, but it's too sugary and cute for me.
That said there's a nice bit at the end when the IFs reunite with their human hosts, now grown up and racked with misery and regret.
Gotta say, Hollywood sure are picking some unique films to remake and based on this, I gotta say I'm not looking forward to the up-coming remake of A Clockwork Orange.
6/10
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