this movie had a lot of promise, and a good start with the very faithful representation of bill and george building that fateful paper boat.
but honestly, the moment we meet pennywise, i could not help but be completely taken out of it. skarsgard absolutely sucks. his choice of tone, his inexplicable voice, and his inappropriate demeanor (no kid would be "charmed" by his antics), just put together a perfect storm of suck. i haven't seen him in any other role so i can't vouch for his acting abilities on the whole. but here, he really didn't get it. this role was out of his depth.
the kids are good actors, but in some cases the acting comes off more than their personalities do. there's so much dialog, too smart dialog, and the peppering of bad language just seems like it's being thrown in specifically to prove it's R-rated.
same goes for the gore. yes, it's bloody. sometimes it's effective. but beverly's scene in the bathroom with the gushing blood gets really ridiculous.
the film barely follows the book and rarely is it really faithful to king's story. the deadlights are never really explored, and only show up in the final climax, for a few seconds. there is also no real reason why pennywise is used as a form, except one kid (again, a change from the book; the character is afraid of werewolves in the book, not clowns). all pennywise does is go around trying to creep out the kids, which works--and yet, the apparent logic is that pennywise can only overtake you when he knows you're afraid of him. that's literally every time he shows up on screen. by those rules, everyone in the loser's club would be dead.
the miniseries was made in 1990. during this time, it was still something for a black actor to have any real presence in a film. in both adult and kid form, mike hanlon is well represented. 27 years later, mike hanlon is barely present here. he's given no personality, nothing to identify him or separate him from the other kids. how progressive is that? the poor kid is left out to see, and mike is one of the central focuses in king's story. he is basically a throwaway in this film.
there is a lot of wasted potential here. it wasn't "bad"; it's competently made, sometimes there's a scare thrown in there. but a lot of the creepiness is highly manufactured and way too eager. it's from that james wan school of horror filmmaking: loaded with tropes and cliches...something that might scare a 12 year old. but not really people our age.
plus, i'm really getting tired of the overzealous references from movies that are taking place in the 80's. in this case, for some reason the kids are heavily into "street fighter" in the arcade. i never saw the first "street fighter" in any arcade growing up. it was "street fighter 2" that came out of nowhere and suddenly overtook arcades everywhere and birthed the fighting game era. so that really bugs me too. you can tell none of these idiots were really living through the 80's.
for a movie that eclipses 2 hours, we don't really get to know these kids, why they like each other and why they grow to love one another enough to overcome It's powers. it's severely underwritten and you can tell it suffered from director exchange.
i'll still watch the next part if it gets made (i'm pretty sure it will) but i'm dubious about it being any good.
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