What If

First Hit: There are really good and engaging moments but it seemed too long overall.

Wallace (Daniel Radcliffe) is lamenting a breakup from his girlfriend.

It’s been a year and as we meet him, he finally deletes her last VM which he has saved 365 times. This was a good way to give the audience perspective of his sadness. He meets Chantry (Zoe Kazan) at a party.

There is an immediate chemistry through their banter. He walks her home and they decided to meet up again but she tells him she has a boyfriend. Through circumstance they meet up and end up being close friends. They spend a lot of time together (which is where the film gets long) in different circumstances and even their friends Nicole and Allan (Mackenzie Davis and Adam Driver respectively), seeing their connection, try to get them to get together.

What didn’t work for me was the script having Chantry being so hesitant to acknowledge what was really going on to her. Yes her boyfriend Ben (Rafe Spall) was a solid guy, but after 5 years together and he didn’t invite her to Dublin to live with him seemed like either a poorly written script or an obvious non-committed relationship.

To have an intelligent character put into this hold position for so long was false.  Her character was too smart to wait so long to make and act on a decision. This in-turn had me not believing the story.

Radcliffe was very good and he projected his restraint towards Chantry with a longing wistfulness that was done very well. Kazan was hampered by the script. I just don’t think she was given the opportunity to make the story better. We all knew the end of the story going into the film. Creating extra delay to get there hurt her ability to perform. Davis and Driver were both amazing and outstanding together. Spall was strong as the solid guy Kazan was waiting for. Elan Mastai wrote the screen play and as I’ve said already there were elongating mistakes in the script that kept the film from moving along to its obvious end. Michael Dowse directed the film and could have driven this film forward in a less meandering way.

Overall: This story had potential but was waylaid by the un-crisp script.

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