IF isn’t a cute fantasy for kids, it’s a poisonous fantasy for adults

polygon.com:

Who is IF for? Looking at any of the film’s marketing or the trailer, the answer seems easy: kids. But after seeing IF, written and directed by John Krasinski (a considerable departure from his A Quiet Place movies), that answer stops seeming so simple. This “family comedy” isn’t particularly family-friendly, or particularly comedic. There are, at most, a handful of lines resembling jokes. Judging by the restlessness of the children in my screening, it isn’t for them at all.

IF feels more like a film targeted at millennial parents: It’s overflowing with symbols of millennial childhood. Characters listen to music on cherished vinyl records, and tap into their memories not on iPhones, but on old video cameras. Cellphones aren’t part of this world. Everything from the carnival rides to the furniture seems to come from the 1990s.

Plot-wise, that focus on millennial nostalgia makes sense. IF centers on 12-year-old Bea (Cailey Fleming), who recently lost her mother, and may soon lose her father (John Krasinski) as well: He’s about to have heart surgery. Bea discovers she and her neighbor Cal (Ryan Reynolds) can see other people’s abandoned imaginary friends, and they launch a quest to reunite these “IF”s with the kids who imagined them, in order to keep the IFs – and people’s imaginations — alive.

IF is all about how comforting and wonderful nostalgia is. This is an extremely familiar theme in current culture. Marketing trends have been pushing the nostalgia agenda. The same thing is happening in pop culture, with popular ’80s and ’90s films and shows from Are You Afraid of the Dark?and Rugrats to Top Gun and Toy Story being rebooted and reimagined. This constant refreshing of the old is known as nostalgia-bait. Even ostensibly new shows like Stranger Things are kept alight by the warm, enticing glow of nostalgia.

While it can be exhausting to exist in a world that seems terrified of anything new, the rampant obsession with and reliance on nostalgia does make sense.