General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

What If (2013 film)

What If is a 2013 romantic comedy directed by Michael Dowse, released in some markets under its original title The F Word, in which a medical-school dropout named Wallace (Daniel Radcliffe) falls for an animator, Chantry (Zoe Kazan), who already lives with her longtime boyfriend, and the two try to remain platonic friends.¹^•² The film is a Canadian-Irish-American co-production, shot in Toronto and Dublin, and it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2013.³^•⁴

Key fact	Detail
Original title	The F Word, where the "F word" in question is "friendship"⁵
Director and writer	Michael Dowse; screenplay by Elan Mastai, from the play Toothpaste and Cigars by T.J. Dawe and Michael Rinaldi¹^•⁶
Lead cast	Daniel Radcliffe (Wallace), Zoe Kazan (Chantry), Rafe Spall (Ben), Adam Driver (Allan), Megan Park (Dalia)⁶
Premiere and rights	World premiere at TIFF 2013; CBS Films took U.S. rights, Entertainment One distributed in Canada and the U.K.³
Runtime and rating	98 minutes; PG-13 in the United States⁷
Critical scores	73% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (130 reviews); Metascore 59 from 36 reviews; 6.8/10 on IMDb (about 85,000 votes)⁸^•⁹^•⁷
Box office	$8.5 million worldwide against an $11.0 million budget¹⁰
Award	Canadian Screen Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, one of five nominations the film received there¹

Spoilers

Plot and premise

After one failed romance after another, Wallace decides to shelve his search for love, even as those surrounding him, among them his roommate Allan (Adam Driver), all appear to be pairing off. At a party he meets Chantry, an animator who lives with her boyfriend Ben (Rafe Spall). The two form an instant connection and strike up a close friendship, while the chemistry between them raises the question the title poses: what if the love of your life is actually your best friend?²

The film's central tension is that both characters behave decently. Chantry's relationship with Ben is not portrayed as a typical rom-com "wrong guy" situation; as Radcliffe put it in an interview, there is nothing in her relationship she can point to that has gone awry, yet she meets Wallace and feels that connection. Wallace, falling for Chantry, keeps his feelings to himself, and the two navigate what the actor called a moral gray area rather than resorting to affairs or breakups.¹¹ Reviewers placed the film in the friends-to-lovers tradition of When Harry Met Sally, asking whether men and women can be friends without romantic feelings entering the picture.¹²

Production

Screenwriter Elan Mastai adapted the play Toothpaste and Cigars by T.J. Dawe and Michael Rinaldi; the script was a 2007 Black List member and, by Mastai's account, the first script he wrote that conveyed his own point of view, written after about seven years and fifteen earlier scripts.⁶^•¹³ The project had been set up at Fox Searchlight before Michael Dowse, coming off his hockey comedy Goon, took it on and helped bring the production to Canada.¹⁴

The film was produced by No Trace Camping, Sheep Noir Films, and Caramel Film, with financing from the Irish Film Board, eOne, Telefilm, OMDC, and SODEC. Principal photography took place in Toronto, with Dublin used as an Irish location, and the delivered cut ran 90 minutes before final trims.⁴^•³ Rogier Stoffers was the cinematographer and AC Newman of The New Pornographers wrote the music.⁴^•¹

At the 2013 festival, CBS Films acquired the U.S. rights, with co-president Wolfgang Hammer describing the film as "a romantic comedy for a new generation that calls to mind classics like Say Anything and When Harry Met Sally." Entertainment One, which co-financed the film, handled distribution in Canada and the U.K.³

Reception

Critics responded to the leads' chemistry and the script's self-awareness. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 73% Tomatometer from 130 reviews, with the site's critics consensus crediting its sharp dialogue and the "effervescent chemistry" of Radcliffe and Kazan for transcending a familiar narrative framework; the audience Popcornmeter stands at 69% from more than 25,000 ratings.⁸ The Metacritic score is 59, based on 36 reviews.⁹

Individual reviews were largely positive. Justin Chang of Variety called it a smart, self-aware riff on romantic-comedy conventions that maintains a core of earnest feeling, roughly "three parts charming to one part cloying."⁹ Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave it three and a half stars out of four, writing that it has "charm to spare" and that Radcliffe and Kazan are irresistible.¹ Scott Tobias of The Dissolve argued that at a time when the romantic comedy was an endangered species, the film proved the formulas could still work without much tweaking.⁹ Filmaffinity users rank it #106 among the best Canadian films of all time.¹

Commercially, the film earned about $8.5 million worldwide against an $11.0 million budget, recovering roughly 77% of its production cost in theaters.¹⁰ It won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.⁵ Telefilm Canada later cited it among recent successful Canadian-Irish co-productions, alongside Brooklyn, Room, and The Breadwinner.¹⁵

Title and availability

The film circulated under two titles: The F Word in Canada and at its premiere, and What If in most international release, including the United States, where Sony Pictures handled home video.¹^•² It is not currently on Netflix in the United Kingdom, and in the United States it streams free with ads on Pluto TV, Kanopy, and Hoopla, and can be rented or bought on Amazon Video, Apple TV, and Fandango at Home.¹⁶^•⁷

A different 2013 film also titled What If exists: an American drama directed by Hari Mahesh about a psychiatrist, Ed Baxter, who develops schizophrenia, with a runtime of about 80 to 90 minutes and a streaming release in 2016.¹⁷ The two films are unrelated, and streaming listings for the name sometimes conflate them.

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026