It: Chapter 2
There are very few movies that fall into the "perfect" category. This, the second chapter of Stephen King's story of the sewer clown Pennywise, doesn't quite reach perfection but it's so close it can taste it. Taste it like the sweet, sweet blood of innocent children.
I've seen the criticism. It's too long (nearly three hours). There's not enough of the clown. It's not really scary.
I disagree on all counts. Yeah, the movie takes quite a while to get to the end, but I think it would be incomplete without all of the pieces. Yes, Pennywise is a supporting player, but the reality is that the clown himself is really only peripheral to the story. Is it scary? Yes, in places, but the story is so much deeper than some clown that eats kids. The real horror isn't there, it's in the heads and hearts of the people at the center of the movie.
If you go in expecting to be terrorized by a clown that gnaws on children's heads, you've gone to the wrong movie. You're only going to get a little of that. The real story of It is a story of a misfit group of kids overcoming their own internal weaknesses, flaws that followed them into adulthood. Bev was abused (maybe sexually) by her father and has fallen into the same pattern of abuse as an adult. Eddie was smothered by his mother and married her domineering mirror. Ben was a fat kid who felt like an outsider, losing weight and gaining success hasn't diminished that insecurity. Inside he's still a fat kid looking for cake. Richie uses humor to cover his own repressed and confusing feelings, as an adult he's the same guy, wisecracks obscuring internal agony. Mike is the child of abusive addicts, afraid to rise above his past, stuck where he is. Stanley is a picked on Jewish kid who can't see himself as anything but a loser and is the weakest link. Bill stutters, can't get to the end of a sentence and blames himself for the death of his little brother.
Alone, each of them is weak, trapped in their own personal miseries. Together, they improbably bring out the best in each other -- in the process killing the personality traits that bring them down.
It's a common theme for King, who must have been tortured as a child. Weak, odd, peculiar, misfit people find a way to overcome their insecurities and fight back against the bullies that torment them. Carrie, Christine, the Shining, Dr Sleep, The Stand.. so many of his books deal with variations of this same concept.
It: Chapter 2 stays true to the theme of King's original book.
Pennywise? He's* really just a physical manifestation of the internal horrors that torment the main characters. They return to Derry, Maine as adults and confront the people and events from their childhood who made them who they are. To live, they must defeat and overcome those boogeymen. That's the real story. Pennywise is just a supporting player in that drama.
You could actually make the argument that Pennywise really doesn't even exist. He's* a stand-in for the bigotry, cruelty, ignorance, meanness, small-mindedness and hate of the town in which they were raised, the environment that shaped them growing up and the people who inhabited that space. I could buy that. Because that's what the real story is. It's not defeating some clown and saving the town, it's burying their own internal demons.
There was so much about this movie I liked. The actors were adequate but didn't overpower the material. Glaring exception? Ben. I thought he was poorly cast. In a crew that included McAvoy, Chastain and Hader he stood out as being out of his depth. Speaking of Hader, I was surprised and impressed by his performance. Don't think he'll ever be a leading man, but he's proven himself able to rise above the bit part characters he was on SNL (something so few of the show's veterans are ever able to do). He was really good as Ritchie (so much better than Harry Anderson was in the TV version of this story).
Pennywise was also fantastic when he was on screen. Just the right mix of menace and charm, the antithesis of Tim Curry's Brooklyn bus driver take on the character in the 90s TV miniseries. This Pennywise was superbly done. Award-worthy if you ask me. Like the critics, I wish I'd seen a little more of him* but the story went where the story went and that's just the reality.
This movie seamlessly blended some really funny moments with tension with drama with pathos with fear with hope. It was, like life, a continuous confounding mix of emotions and it all hit with reality.
Thing I also liked? The predictable King cameo. The first one that made him look like an actual human, not some stand-out-like-a-sore-thumb weirdo (think the preacher in Pet Semetary, the gooby ATM guy in Maximum Overdrive). His cameos are typically such a jolt they take you out of the movie -- because he's a funky looking guy and cannot act in the least. Here the director reined him in and he fit. That? impressive.
I also LOVED, loved, loved the repetitive inside joke. Good story, just didn't like the ending. If you're a fan of Stephen King's work and of this book in particular (and I am, although I've come to detest him as a moronic political entity) you'll get it. If you're not, it just seems like a throwaway line. It was awesome to me.
This isn't a movie I'll watch over and over and over again (like Godfather, Pulp Fiction, etc.) but it was one that I thoroughly enjoyed from start to finish. I get that Pennywise didn't have enough screen time, but he* was so good during the time he* was there I really hope the character earns recognition. Really, really good.
As an aside, my movie-watching partner didn't have the same reaction. She thought it was way too long and short on horror. She liked the humor, but said it "just wasn't scary enough" and moved so slowly she was getting bored. I respect that. I think we went to see different movies based on our expectations. She likes King's work but isn't as immersed in it as I am.
I say that to say that if you're going to this movie expecting to spend a couple of hours being frightened to death by a bloodthirsty clown, this isn't really that movie at all.
* I asterisked the he and him references because in this triggered culture some ridiculous assholes are bitching and howling because they object to Pennywise being referred to with a masculine pronoun. Since the clown is not the "real" personality of the entity, but merely a projection It has taken on, these sensitive twigs are "offended" that people discount that the true entity could be female, trans, pan, genderless or some other mutation we haven't created yet. Well, fuck those douchebags.
FWIW: Part 1 of this franchise is reviewed on Page 124 of this thread.
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