Well it went unevenly thereafter. I can’t recall who wound up directing this instead of Fukunaga but he (she?) was in too much of a rush to do a bunch of Pennywise scares in the first third, IMO. If I hadn’t already read the book and seen the TV series I would barely have known anything about the kids by the fourth Pennywise 1-on-1.
So then it does settle down, sort of, to get some character stuff in but it the pacing remains off. The swimming scene is pretty good (and the boys all do a good job of being suitably mind blown by the stranger in their midst) but the first group visit to the haunted house was too long. The gal who played Beverly was the best of the kids (probably followed by Finn Wolfhard). I have no earthly idea what the point of Mike’s character was and feel sorry for that kid. I kept forgetting he was in the movie. It wasn’t just that they kind of shifted some of Mike’s thing over to Ben (although as I recall research and whatnot in the kid era is done by multiple parties), but they just didn’t give him anything beyond a token bully scene (I can’t even remember why the black adult was yelling at him in the beginning). Oh, the kid who played Henry was pretty good too.
Kidnapping Beverly seemed like a “we couldn’t figure out a way to get the kids back together so eh let’s kidnap one” move, with the unfortunate side effect of “you chose the one girl, good thinking professor”.
As a person who thinks IT (at least the kids viewpoint) is one of the best books I’ve ever read, I expected to hate the movie. I did, but oddly, it was the parts where they stayed too close to the book I didn’t like.
I felt there were too many kids. As mentioned, I’m not sure what Mike’s role is since Ben became the historian. I could never remember who was Stan. I kept thinking the kid that was Stan was Ritchie. I don’t think the Finn really captured Ritchie with the voices. A lot of times – like the leper on Niebolt St. – it felt like they were checking off things from the book. Overall, I think they could have condensed it from 7 kids to 3-4 and the story would be better.
I did think Bill Skarsgård did a great job as Pennywise. Henry Bowers I wasn’t thrilled with, but Patrick Hockstetter was excellent. I also liked the scene where the slide projector went haywire.
Slightly off topic: Upthread Granath mentioned that they “cut frames” to make Pennywise seem otherworldly. To me this means he moved kinda jumpy, a horror movie staple. But ai haven’t seen the movie. There is another technique that I have seen in horror movies where it seems like the character is jumping around but kinda in slow motion. An example of this is the scene in Braveheart when Wallace is coming into town to confront the noble that killed his wife. The whole thing is in slow motion except for when one solider is moving laterally behind an obstacle menacingly, he kinda jumps around. I’ve seen that technique in many movies and it’s usually accompanied by an animal growl to drive in the otherworldly aspect. Is this the same technique, and how do they achieve it?
Hah I got confused about Stan too, for a spell.
I feel like they all but abandoned the characterizations of the kids in the books, beyond the surface/important to the plot stuff. Like Ritchie doesn’t come off as the “joker who sometimes goes a bit to far”, he’s just another kid (they’re all prone to sarcasm and one liners). Having Pennywise do the “Beep Beep” line just sort of highlighted that they underplayed that aspect. Likewise, the realization that Eddie’s being fed fake meds just sort of seems thrown in there. You get he’s got an overprotective mother from the aftermath of the first house visit/the initial “bye mom” scene, but even that sort of comes up a bit short in terms of helping to define the character.
I think the movie would have been much better served by underplaying the opening a bit (no need for the basement scene, no need for jawmonster) and then giving us a good 30+ minutes of getting to know the kids without too much on the scare front. Instead we jump right into introducing most kids to Pennywise, before we even get a good idea of who is who.
The TV series, for it’s faults, does a much better job with this. Each kid is more clearly defined, and Mike isn’t superfluous.