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From a paper company to "A Quiet Place," John Krasinski's career has been an interesting - and successful - trajectory to watch. In 2018, he shocked everyone with the mean-and-lean "A Quiet Place," his third directorial feature, which did so well at the box office that its sequel was inevitable (and pretty good, as well). So, how does an actor-turned-director cash in his blank check? With "IF," a story about imaginary friends, of course.

Don't let the monsters in "A Quiet Place" fool you; Krasinski is an unabashedly sentimental filmmaker. He infuses his sentiment amongst the monsters in those films and puts it front-and-center in his entirely different and detrimentally sitcom-like "The Hollars." The mawkishness is dialed up to the max in "IF," but for the most part, Krasinski makes it work with this charming family movie.

Things kick off on a bit of a dour note when Bea (Cailey Fleming) is mourning the loss of her mother, and some years later, her father (Krasinski) is prepping for an operation. While her father is staying in the hospital, Bea is living with her grandmother (Fiona Shaw) in her New York City apartment.

Bea winds up meeting Calvin (Ryan Reynolds), a downstairs neighbor who shares the same gift Bea does: they can both see people's forgotten IFs (imaginary friends). The IFs are discarded as people grow older and sequestered to an IFs-only retirement home. Bea desperately needs distraction and joy in her life, so she teams up with Calvin to try and bring people's IFs back into their lives.

"IF" features a revolving door of imaginary friends voiced by a roster of Krasinski's famous friends. Blue (voiced by Steve Carell), is a giant, purple, Grimace-like creation who tags along for most of Bea and Calvin's adventures. The rest of the voice cast includes Bradley Cooper, George Clooney, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Bill Hader, Sam Rockwell, Blake Lively and a touching voice performance from the late Louis Gossett Jr. Krasinski really called in some favors, and the all-star cast were willing to lend their talents for a day in a voiceover booth.

Fleming and Reynolds make for an unlikely pair, both playing off each other with fun banter. Reynolds, ahead of his next outing as Deadpool this summer, tones down his sarcastic persona, which he has been coasting on since the success of the first "Deadpool." It creeps through, but this is an appreciated quieter turn from the actor.

Nothing about "IF" is subtle, which can make the movie occasionally cloying, especially when Krasinski (who wrote the screenplay) tries to flesh out the story. In the third act a plot point teeters on ghoulish, but Krasinski's film has no ill intent. He's just a filmmaker and a parent, who has acquired enough cache to make a movie for his children. Even when "IF" falters, Krasinski's energy and pride in the project shines through.

The "Quiet Place" films and "IF" show that Krasinski loves to build a movie from the ground up and take his audiences into a world that only exists in his imagination. He doesn't always have the best handle on the story as a whole in his latest, but all of the IFs are creatively designed and thought out. The inventiveness of the movie is its strong suit, but Krasinski is also able to pull at the heartstrings effectively, even when "IF" dares you to resist it.