Grade: B
“It Chapter Two” somehow managed to be both satisfyingly fun and dismally flawed.
The film takes place 27 years after the events of the first movie and after the death of townspeople in the fictional town of Derry, character Mike Harlon convinces the rest of the Losers’ Club to return to their hometown and defeat Pennywise.
I overlooked some of the issues with the first “It” movie because of how much I liked it – mostly because of Bill Skarsgård’s performance as Pennywise. He brings the same energy to this film and steals the show every time he is on screen.
Along with Bill Skarsgård, the film has a star-studded cast including James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain. But out of all the adult actors in The Losers’ Club, the one that gave the best performance was easily Bill Hader as the adult version of Richie Tozier. Hader, like always, was a great comic relief, but was also surprisingly good in the more serious and emotional elements of the film.
One thing I have seen many critics complain about is this film’s run time of nearly three hours in length, but the run time never bothered me. This film is one the best paced three-hour long films I have ever seen. Director Andy Muschietti did a great job keeping the entire film moving at a fast, even pace.
That being said, there are a few parts of this film that could have been cut out to shorten down the runtime. One example is the adult Henry Bowers subplot. Bowers is a local bully whose involvement with Pennywise starts in the first movie; his return in the second chapter doesn’t add much to the story. It was clear that Muschietti was trying to be faithful to the book, but for this movie, they should have either added more for the character to do or kept him out of the film entirely.
Another disappointment in the film was the CGI (Computer-Generated Images). In “It,” the CGI was bad, but I expected the CGI in this film to be far better considering the first film made over $700 million at the box office back in 2017. If the film made that much money, it would make sense for the studio to have a far more considerable budget.
One of the strengths of “It” was the film’s comedy, which is a failure in this movie. Not to say this film isn’t funny — it is. The problem is the comedy placement. Characters tended to crack jokes in the middle of suspenseful scenes, which ruined the building tension and didn’t garner many laughs. Because of this, the film lost most of its horror element and ended up not being all that scary.
Something else that disappointed me was how much Pennywise was in the film. The biggest complaint I always have when I watch a monster movie is that the monster is shown too much. For example, “Jaws” is one of the greatest monster movies ever made, and the shark isn’t shown until halfway through the movie. That entire time you are thinking of things like “How big is the shark?” and “What does it look like?” The first “It” movie has already been released and we know what Pennywise looks like, but the last remaining threads of shock were wasted because of how often he appeared. This only gets worse in the film’s final act because Pennywise is in almost every shot of the movies last 40-50 minutes.
Even though I have a lot of issues with this film, it is still a blast to watch and serves as a somewhat satisfying ending to the story of The Losers’ Club.
Story by Jake Ditto