Basically the main hook of this movie is the fact that Harry Potter is doing rom-coms now. Huh. The promos for this film have been all over the radio stations the past few days so it is almost literally impossible to not hear Daniel Radcliffe’s prolonged “Yeaaaah, why not?” in that accent of his, capturing my very sentiments about the movie itself. Here’s my round-up of Michael Dowse (Take Me Home Tonight)’s entry to the Torronto International Film Fest last year, What If. 
Please note that there may be spoilers. Read at your own risk.
THE STORY:
Wallace (Daniel Radcliffe – The Woman in Black) has is having a rough year. He has recently dropped out of med school because he caught his then girlfriend Megan (Sarah Gadon – Enemy) cheating on him, he has a dead end job with zero fulfillment and he lives at the attic of his sister Ellie (Jemima Rooper – Lost in Austen)’s house where he also plays the babysitter to his nephew Felix (Lucius Hoyos – The Colony). Things start to look up when, after attending a party his friend Allan (Adam Driver – Lincoln) throws, he meets Chantry (Zoe Kazan – Ruby Sparks), a quirky animator whom he shares a lot of things in common with. The only problem is, Chantry already has a boyfriend – Ben (Rade Spall – One Day) – and she only wants to be friends. Then things really get complicated because not only does Wallace have to live with watching Allan and Nicole (Mackenzie Davis – That Awkward Moment) – a girl Allan met the same night Wallace met Chantry – perform PDA everywhere, he also has to fend off advances from Chantry’s younger sister Dalia (Megan Park – Charlie Bartlett).
THE GOOD:
- Zoe Kazan is a special brand of quirky. While not devastatingly stunning like Zoe Deschanel, she has a certain charm about her that makes you instantly like her. This is crucial, of course, because Chantry is a character very easy to hate and had she been played by anybody else, I’d probably want to gouge her eyes out for being selfish. As it is, because Zoe Kazan played her so emotionally, there is still quite a lot of sympathy for her.
- Daniel Radcliffe, of course, and his own personal brand of awkward. I liked how the banter with Zoe Kazan felt so natural that I had to question if parts of them were improvised. There was also an innocence about his portrayal that made me believe him when his Wallace said that he really was just going to try and be friends with Chantry. I read that Casey Affleck was originally cast to play the lead and I can’t help but think that there’s no way he could make that line believable.
- Adam Driver as Allan. While everybody else in the cast gave good performances, Adam Driver stood out to me because clearly Allan is a despicable douchebag, but he still made him likeable.
- The soundtrack. As to be expected from an indi quirky romantic movie, the song selections were pretty good in setting the tone of the scenes and what not.
THE BAD:
- The Dublin scenes were so generic. Aside from one shot of a bridge, the whole thing may as well have been filmed in any other city. There were no shots that did the city any favors.
- It could have been more interesting. While definitely fine on its own, there were moments in the film that I thought was leading up to something but didn’t actually go anywhere, which left me a bit confused and disappointed. Like that scene where Wallace goes to Chantry’s apartment and finds Dalia there clad in nothing but a towel. There was no reason for her to be just in a towel if they weren’t going to end up sleeping together, you know?
THE UGLY:
- That in the end, it fell back to formula blah-ness. The ending was sweet, don’t get me wrong, but I was disapppointed that the film makers didn’t fight very hard to stray away from convention. It started out very much like did but it didn’t have enough cajonea to end like it, which is unfortunate.
- They changed the title from The F Word because they thought that the double entendre was too rowdy. What the hell, right?
All in all What If was an entertaining movie, if a little bit generic. Performances were good and the characters were written well that I can’t really complain about them being technically horrible people because hey, they’re incredibly realistic that way.
THE VERDICT: 7/10.
*All photos are lifted from the film’s IMDB page.
