★★

There’s nothing wrong with a children’s film striving for cross-generational appeal. A hit on target can be pure magic. Pixar nailed just that with every film in their heyday and it’s a sweet spot the first two Paddington films exemplified. Miss, however, and you might wind up with a film like IF. That’s to say, a middling effort, neither fun enough for kids nor interesting enough for mum and dad. This is the new feature from John Krasinski, skewing young for the first time after horror dabbles in A Quiet Place. Krasinski has a natural flare for concept cinema but here his efforts feel strained, the push for pathos too obvious and contrived. It’s like watching an adult’s distant memory of childhood, repurposed through the weary lens of parental experience. The imagination is there, it’s just not the wild and boundless sort of children really enjoy.

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