Review: IT: Chapter Two
It’s 27 years later, and Mike Hanlon (Isaiah Mustafa)
reunites his childhood ‘Losers Club’ friends to deal with their past trauma: IT
has returned to Derry. The other grown versions of the characters are played by
James McAvoy (Bill), Jessica Chastain (Beverly), Jay Ryan (Ben), Bill Hader
(Richie), James Ransone (Eddie), and Andy Bean (Stanley). Bill Skarsgard
returns as Pennywise the Dancing Clown, the most prominent visual manifestation
of IT.
I was the one guy who actively disliked the 2017
adaptation of the Stephen King epic tome. Yes, I was very much loyal to the
1990 TV miniseries (and Tim Curry’s equally terrifying and hilarious Pennywise),
but it was more than that. I honestly thought it was a pretty badly made film.
The horror elements were especially hokey, with poor Bill Skarsgard failing to
produce a single goosebump with his far too CGI-assisted, infantile
interpretation of Pennywise. It was also repetitive, overblown, and just plain
overrated. I did like young Jake Dylan Grazer as Eddie though, and that bit
with the bloody sink.
Well, now here’s the 2019 follow-up from director Andy
Muschietti and adapter Gary Dauberman (the folks behind the first instalment,
of course), focussing primarily with the 27 year reunion and climax of King’s
novel. In fact, it’s quite similar in story to the final half of the
miniseries, just with a few minor character trait switcheroos and a better
climax. The result is…slightly better, but still very, very far from being a
good film and for a lot of the same reasons.
I get the feeling it’s likely not in the book, but the
opening scene here is really effective stuff. So we got off to a good start
here. The casting of the grown up ‘Loser’s Club’ is hit and miss. Jessica
Chastain, Bill Hader, and James McAvoy are all appropriately cast as Beverly,
Richie, and Bill respectively, even if Richard Thomas was a more believable
stutterer than McAvoy. Whilst he’s no master thespian, Isaiah Mustafa (forever
known as ‘The Old Spice’ guy) is an interesting and solid choice for grown-up
Mike. I would never have thought of him for this part, but he’s solid. I liked
the idea that the further these characters got away from Derry, the more easily
they forgot about the childhood trauma. That was a really nice touch that I
don’t think the miniseries handled quite as well.
I was less sold on James Ransone, and especially Kiwi-born
hunk Jay Ryan as, respectively, grown-up Eddie and Ben. Ransone at least looks
a lot like his younger counterpart, Grazer. However, I found him a bit of a
stretch as Eddie, so memorably played by a worried-looking Dennis Christopher
in the miniseries. Ransone gets the worried expression down pat, but seemed otherwise
miscast and too loud as a grown-up version of the fragile hypochondriac mummy’s
boy (Unlike the book or miniseries, Eddie grows up to be a risk assessor here,
which is just a tad too cute for me). He’s not terrible, but I just wasn’t
buying this grown-up Eddie, whether it’s Ransone’s fault or more likely the
screenplay. Jay Ryan is just flat-out wrong as Ben, the film going too far in
transforming the former child ‘fatty’ into a soap opera hunk (Literally, Ryan played
Jack Scully for three years on the long-running Aussie soap “Neighbours”).
Also, more importantly, his performance is entirely flat and uninteresting. Ryan’s
a mediocre actor, and stands out like a sore thumb amongst much, much better performers.
Also standing out like a sore thumb is the fact that 38 year-old Ryan is
clearly younger than his co-stars. They’re all 40+ (Mustafa being 46 if I’m not
mistaken), and he looks younger than 38 to be honest. It’s distracting,
especially given they’re all supposed to be the same age. I did get a kick out
of the cameo by Brandon Crane, who played young Ben in the miniseries and more
importantly to me, played perennial third wheel Doug Porter on “The Wonder
Years” (Also, look out for Peter Bogdanovich early on with McAvoy. Why is
Peter Bogdanovich here? I don’t care, it’s Peter Bogdanovich and he’s always
welcome on my screen). As I said earlier, James McAvoy isn’t a convincing
stutterer but he is definitely a convincing Bill. He’s immediately right for
the part. I’ve never been a fan of Jessica Chastain, but she fits the bill just
fine even if Amy Adams would’ve been the obvious casting choice in my opinion
(Perhaps a little too obvious given Lillis played a young Adams on “Sharp
Objects”). I have to say, despite Chastain and McAvoy’s best efforts, the
whole Bill/Beverly/Ben love triangle was handled a bit better in the miniseries
(As with the previous film, it’s impossible for me not to go back to the
miniseries. It was one of the first horror-themed things I ever watched).
The best casting in the entire film is obviously Bill
Hader as the grown-up Richie. Seriously, it’s not even a close contest, Hader
walks off with the film easily. I liked Harry Anderson a lot in the miniseries,
but Hader gets to play Richie with a bit more heart and depth, and Hader knocks
it out of the park. As for the child actors, they don’t get as much screen time
here, so the only one who really stands out here is Sophia Lillis. If anything
is fair in this world, I really think the Amy Adams-lookalike is a star in the
making. She makes her minutes count in this one.
I really enjoyed the music score by Benjamin Wallfisch
(“Hidden Figures”, “A Cure for Wellness”, “IT”), though I
still prefer the score from the miniseries just a tad. As for the horror and FX
scenes, the highlight is the fortune cookie bit, with much more convincing FX
than in the miniseries and it’s hilarious and brilliant. Outside of that, the
best I can say is that what helps this film work a bit better than the previous
instalment is that there’s not as much emphasis on horror this time around.
When we do get horror, it falls just as flat as last time, including once again
a not very frightening or effective characterisation of Pennywise the Dancing
Clown/IT by Bill Skarsgard and the FX team. I’m sorry, but I just prefer Tim
Curry, white facepaint and some pretty ugly prosthetic teeth to the all-too
obvious computer FX we get from Bill Skarsgard’s version of the character. You’re
all-too aware that you’re watching computer graphics, whereas with the
miniseries, you were seeing an actual physical being, albeit a human in makeup
and clown outfit, and then a crap giant spider at the climax. Skarsgard’s best
moment is actually the random bit where a sans-makeup Skarsgard masquerades as
Beverly’s dad. It’s the closest the guy gets to being creepy and he didn’t need
makeup to do it. I don’t know who came up with the idea, but directly stealing
from the “Elm Street” series by having a character’s chest carved with a
message didn’t impress me one bit. That was pretty unnecessary, methinks (is it
in the book?) as was Stan pretty much re-enacting a special FX scene from John
Carpenter’s overrated remake of “The Thing”. The Mrs. Kersch scene was
another really stupid FX/horror moment as well (The miniseries did it better,
despite much less of a budget). The nadir is the absolutely awful FX work on
whatever the fuck that Native American/peyote-induced dream sequence bullshit with
Mike was. I guess we should be thankful that we don’t get the giant turtle
thing from the book, but seriously I have no idea what that Native American
stuff was doing here except that it’s apparently in King’s novel. Fair enough,
but it definitely didn’t work on screen here (Don’t even get me started on the
lumberjack statue. Please don’t get me started on that). There’s a couple of
positives with the title character, as we actually get to see Pennywise/IT kinda
sorta eating children which is certainly memorably disgusting. If you’re gonna
have the character be a child-eating monster, you’ve kinda gotta show us that,
right? Also, the climax is certainly better handled than the miniseries and its
inadequate spider ‘special’ effect. It’s not as good as the fortune cookies
from an FX point of view and the climax is always gonna be a bit of a letdown
since even the biggest King diehard must confess that the finale isn’t all that
great after all the build-up. It’s still just a giant spider, no matter whether
it’s in literary form, TV miniseries, or this film. It can’t help but be a bit
of a letdown. However, it’s still a much better-realised version of the climax
than poor Tommy Lee Wallace was afforded for the budget of the miniseries. For
starters, it blends a giant spider with the clown facet of the character,
giving more of a connection between the two, which I think really helps. *****
SPOILER WARNING ***** I absolutely loved the idea of IT shrivelling up and
becoming pitiful and pathetic. That was a really clever idea, though it’s
somewhat ruined by the bad, baby-voiced acting of Skarsgard. Ugh, he overdoes
it. ***** END SPOILER *****
Better than the previous film, but still a long way
from being a good film. Some of the performances work, but I’ll stick to
the 1990 miniseries. If you liked the previous film, you’ll probably feel
fairly warmly towards this one too. It’s just not for me, especially not with
the phony CGI and lame ‘jump’ scares. Sorry, but this is… #NotMyPennywise.
Rating: C
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