John Krasinski Insists That His New Movie Wasn’t Inspired by a Cult ‘90s Comedy
Despite the fact that he first made a name for himself by constantly staring directly into a camera lens, John Krasinski has proven to be a pretty good director. He obviously had a big hit with A Quiet Place, the horror movie set in a post-apocalyptic hellscape/wish fulfillment fantasy, in which a middle-aged couple’s kids are never ever allowed to make a single noise.
Now Krasinski has a new movie coming out: IF, which he also wrote. From what we can tell, it’s all about a girl who gains the rare ability to see and hear imaginary friends (or “IFs” if you will). As Ryan Reynolds explains in the film’s trailer, “Imaginary friends are real, and when their kids grow up, they’re forgotten.” Which is kind of a bummer. At least the movie features a cast of comedy A-listers, including Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Awkwafina and Steve Carell as the voice of Great Value brand Grimace.
But IF is hardly the first comedy about a character rediscovering imaginary friends. Back in 1991, there was Drop Dead Fred, starring Phoebe Cates as a young woman who is revisited by her anarchic childhood imaginary friend, played by British alt comedian Rik Mayall of The Young Ones fame.
Possibly because it was their first exposure to kid-friendly body horror, a lot of people who grew up with Drop Dead Fred remember it very fondly, and it has become something of a cult classic.
There are clearly a ton of differences between Drop Dead Fred and IF — like, one is about a child, and the other is about an adult who is possibly having some kind of breakdown. And we doubt that IF features any scenes where Carell’s purple monster character gets googly-eyes while looking up an unsuspecting woman’s skirt.
Still, it’s hard not to compare the two movies, which share a broadly similar premise. And Drop Dead Fred similarly featured a community of imaginary friends, who are invisible to most people.
Considering that Krasinski was at the impressionable age of 11 when Drop Dead Fred came out, it seems somewhat conceivable that it could have influenced his concept for IF.
Well, now someone has actually questioned Krasinski about this issue. During the IF premiere in London, a reporter stopped the director and mentioned that one of his “beloved childhood movies” was Drop Dead Fred. Krasinski suggested that he, too, was a fan, but when asked if it at all inspired his new movie, he responded: “Not really, other than I like that movie. No, this was all done for, and inspired by, my kids.”
So there you have it. Cased closed. He just wanted to make a movie for his children — unless he’s just saying that because he doesn’t want to get sued by Phoebe Cates.
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