Let me start by saying that I am a Harry Potter fan-with all that entails.  Let me also say that Daniel Radcliffe’s new film, the wistful romantic comedy What If? is very sweet. So much so that I threw up in my mouth a little on my way home from the theatre, as if I’d consumed some cinematic ipecac.  It  almost feels like some sad (in a bad way) ‘shipper fanfiction featuring Harry-Hermione translated as “real” world characters.  Which has it’s charms and funny moments, but the actual product is so studiously precious that it comes off phony, like a party where everyone’s smartphones are glued to their hands as they romanticize  artisanal accoutrements.

The only genuine surprise of this film is that no one is drinking cocktails out of mason jars. Don’t get me wrong, I like artisanal crafts and mason jar cocktails as much as the next guy in horn-rimmed glasses. But there’s a difference between an idiosyncratic style, and blindly following the trends around you, proclaiming them sacred expressions of individuality.  Very little about the direction, style or characters in What If? distinguishes them from the stereotypical world of those who don’t realize that their plaid shirts and pinafore dresses make them as unique as sister wives within a polygamist commune. I have to draw the line at cutesy movies like this one, a 500 Days of Summer without the substance, and the fact that we know how everything will work out does not augment what it has to say.

What’s even more frightening, is that there might actually be an audience that would interpret the turns of the plot as incidents strong enough to sustain interest throughout a feature-length picture. The film is so predictable I started to think that it could be a brilliant, razor-sharp parody on modern twenty-something culture, or an overly-conscious product of it, but it definitely wasn’t both.  It’s too generic to be that clever.  The film takes place in Toronto, but it may as well be “Metropolis.”

It all tries too hard to make itself quirky, but has no real character to make it stand out in any way.  It’s cute at the expense of any portrait of people that couldn’t be told in Facebook updates.  And yet it takes itself too seriously: the couple played by Daniel Radcliffe and Zoe Kazan (the “manic pixie dream girl” du jour) prefer thinking they’ve got wounds and obstacles too strong to overcome, until the reality that they actually have no problems finally pummels them hard and long enough to snap them out of their self-perpetuated misery.

These emotional scab-pickers are our companions throughout, which is a problem for the viewer: no one with a lick of sense could suspend disbelief to have sympathy for them. It’s the kind of movie where starry night skies hang above characters named “Wallace” and “Chantry” (pronounced shawn-tree), who suffer from a willful rejection of adulthood.

They have instant chemistry while meeting at a party, surfing on a wave of witty faux-surreal banter that carries them farther and farther away from believable human behavior.  As if it couldn’t get any worse, what’s the big snag in this perfect union of Wallace and Chantry?- She already has a boyfriend!!!  Her boyfriend (who does look kind of like a Weasley) isn’t really that bad of a guy, but they don’t have anything stronger than the nice apartment between them.  We never buy them as people in a long-term relationship, or even as a believable couple.

All this chemistry is not wasted, but teased out as Chantry insists that she and Wallace will be best friends, even though she shows more passion for him than her boyfriend. Wallace falls instantly for her but finds himself similarly flummoxed by the idea of taking some sort of progressive action, devoting his energy to the dead-end task of keeping things platonic.  What If? doesn’t have characters so much as Instagram-filtered daguerreotypes cribbed from hellish fantasy hipsterscapes.

These two cling desperately to emotional ruts and the lack of character development gives us no reasonable explanation as to why.  Instead we get details about Wallace and Chantry that act against the film’s goals.  The relationship is best summed up when they go skinny dipping together in the fuzzy moonlight. This inspires Chantry to play a coy game of show me yours, I’ll show you mine, behavior we associate with grade-school children who have never seen the opposite sex’ genitals- then she bitterly complains at the prospect of sharing a sleeping bag with the naked Wallace.  Either she wasn’t impressed with what she saw, or this is how best friends act these days.

In this go-round with bangs and Peter Pan collars, Zoe Kazan unfortunately submits to the fetishization and rejuvenile vintage aesthetic she deconstructed in her screenplay for Ruby Sparks. Ms. Kazan is not to blame for this wanton impression of a story, which makes it even more painful to see her in What If? a.k.a the perfect example of what she decried in her own writing.  With her little-girl antics she feels tailor-made to play one half of an infuriatingly childish and indecisive couple in this film, which is either a great compliment to her talent or a great insult to her taste.  Hermione she is decidedly not.

Daniel Radcliffe has developed a great deal from the awkward bundle of crutches and indication since we first saw him act in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. He’s matured and he has made some heartening bold choices on stage (Equus) and on screen (Kill Your Darlings) since his term at Hogwarts ended.  This is not one of them. I will admit it’s fun to see him all grown up and doing other popular genre fare, and that he’s a man who also happens to be comfortable with nudity (sorry folks, no full-frontal here as in Equus, just his hairy ass and legs, which were met with gleeful giggles in the theatre). Sad news is that the film mostly squanders his many talents as a performer.

Despite claims to the contrary in Variety, the laziness of this indie script allows Radcliffe to slink back into his stilted Harry Potter tics, only now Harry is a character who has no magic or chivalric heroism, and he still lives in a closet under the stairs. No doubt the actor formerly known as “the one who lived,” could carry a romantic film. The one moment of decent writing (a best-man’s speech at his friend’s wedding) coincides with Radcliffe’s most impressive moment in the picture. When he has something to chew on, he rewards your attention. But this role has so little meat on its bones that he becomes malnourished, and those actorly muscles atrophy before our eyes.

It’s hard to feel anything for Wallace or Chantry because the film doesn’t answer basic questions about them.  As a result we can’t believe in the emotional upheaval that complicates their decisions.   We experience little of their interior worlds beyond the butterfly-girl drawings that they hallucinate at crucial moments.  And by the end, we really don’t know anything about What If?’s star-crossed wallflowers.  All we learn is neither was honest about being just friends, whose jobs and bank accounts never bear the brunt of their immaturity.  Their real friendships are shallow and unconvincing, their emotional lives wouldn’t perplex a toddler, and they refuse to solve their own solvable problems.

That the film made the festival circuit last year under the title “The F Word” (F meaning friend) is bizarrely appropriate.  The film, its title and its characters are as wishy-washy as the studio and director over what the overriding theme was.  The release title suggests an effervescent contemplation of the possibilities that life offers and withdraws with great alacrity, which doesn’t match the film as well as the original title.  It must be a shortened version of something like “What If Everything Worked Out Perfectly for Some Young Straight White Rich Kids?” Since nothing ever feels in doubt, there is no inquisitive tension about a tragic crossing of ships in the harbor, and no danger of any cutting observations on the youthful navigation of the winding paths of love. Hence, that what if feeling never materializes, just that WTF? feeling.

http://whatifmovie.com/