What If is a film with a personality crisis. The original title, The F Word, was dispatched in favour of the more nondescript What If, presumably to save the blushes of some easily offended punters. The film itself is a tale of two halves, on the one hand aiming to capture the twee quirkiness of (500) Days of Summer while also emulating the frank dialogue popularised by hit TV show Girls (the presence of Adam Driver in the cast is hardly a coincidence). Director Michael Dowse does his best to wrangle these contradictory influences into a cohesive whole but the result is a little like a foul-mouthed toddler – simultaneously adorably amusing and disconcertingly inappropriate.
Daniel Radcliffe plays Wallace, a genuinely nice guy nursing a broken heart following a bad break up. When he meets a charming girl at a party (Chantry played by Zoe Kazan), things begin to look up. Sadly for Wallace, Chantry is in a long term relationship with handsome, successful Ben (Rafe Spall). Against his better judgement, Wallace decides to remain friends with Chantry while trying to convince both himself and his sceptical best friend Allan (Adam Driver) that their relationship is nothing more than platonic.
Yes it’s that old chestnut; can men and women ever truly be friends without sex getting in the way? Well, yes of course they can but cinema just won’t take that as an answer. Instead the question keeps getting raked up by romantic comedies as if it were the Riddle of the Sphinx. Back in 1989, When Harry Met Sally marked the high point of this theme and it’s been a clear case of the law of diminishing returns ever since.
The couple at the heart of this iteration of the theme are twinkly-eyed, earnest young people who are very difficult to dislike. This is at once the film’s biggest strength and its biggest problem. Wallace and Chantry are very amiable company but they are both far too polite to play dirty. This means that their (admittedly sweet) relationship is almost completely free of tension – both sexual and otherwise. Adam Driver is a welcome shot of acidity amongst all this niceness but his loose, acerbic acting style feels out of place – it doesn’t help that he looks about ten years older than Radcliffe. All in all it’s hard to see anyone feeling particularly strongly about what is a perfectly nice but unremarkable film. If you met What If at a party, you’d definitely just want to stay friends.