John Krasinski seems like one of the nicest guys on the entire planet, so it’s with some regret that I report his new movie “IF” is largely a bust — a family film in search of an audience that it never convincingly finds.
The idea is a decent one, if nicked from a couple of decades of Pixar movies. What if children’s imaginary friends — their I.F.s, get it? — hung around Earth in a mildly depressive state once their kids grew up into adulthood? Where would they go? In the most felicitous invention in writer-director Krasinski’s screenplay, they’d move to a retirement home a few stories beneath Coney Island, a run-down assisted-living facility for abandoned fantasy pals of all shapes and sizes. (Can imaginary friends apply for Medicare? Discuss.)