We so rarely get bad movies like IF these days, when Hollywood’s main impulse is not to create art but to prolong and protect the value of intellectual property at all cost. Most blockbusters are focus-grouped and test-marketed until every last shred of quirky personality has been drained out of them. They are coldly targeted at the maximum number of possible viewers.

IF, on the other hand, is a movie with no obvious audience; it’s too slow and depressing for children and too maudlin and cutesy for adults. It loudly yells at audiences they need to have some fun, while not actually providing any fun itself. It harkens back to another time, when a big-name director could bank on himself and get an original idea into theaters, no matter how murkily thought through it was. I did not enjoy it, but I can imagine a world where more films made in its spirit exist.

Full review at ScreenCrush.