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Sunday, February 4, 2018

IT (2017)

The Pied Piper meets the gang from STAND BY ME (plus token girl) in last summer’s big, family-friendly horror hit. Surprisingly shy on the scare factor, like much Stephen King, the pay-off fails an elaborate set-up, IT plops a devilish child-snatching clown in a small town once every 27 years for a spate of deadly havoc. Heck, the town’s rotten enough without him! What with lean, mean older teens getting their jollies terrorizing outlier pubescents like Fat Boy, Asthmatic Wimp; Cautious Jew; Girl with a bad rep & a molesting dad; a token Black*; Kid with Glasses (really, his handicap is glasses?); and likable stutterer whose kid brother got ‘clowned.’ (Note change: the STAND BY ME lead lost an older brother.) There’s some nice late-‘80s detail, and a few deft gross-outs, but who approved a script that only moves forward by dropping things? Fine to drop a clue now & then, but here, every story beat is nudged into place with something dropped: knife, booklet, packet of capsules, flashlight, bullets, rope. Not that audiences minded. (Or noticed?) Like having the girl crop her hair in anger and suddenly turn into Kristy McNichol. It’s an ‘80s thing.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Like STAND BY ME, the kids are all junior psychologists. So much positive feedback! Maybe that’s what they’ve all become in the PART TWO 27-yr reunion pic.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *The Black Kid gets a PC handle: Home Schooled Kid! Really! Then they let him be the guy who brings a gun to the final showdown. An abattoir gun, but still.

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