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| Bill (aka Henry): It's a boat Narrator: Hey, that's the name of the movie |
It
Director - Andres Muschietti
Writers - Chase Palmer, Cary Joji Fukunaga and Gary Dauberman
Starring - Jaeden Lieberher, Bill Skarsgard, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard
It is Stranger Things with an R-rating told in movie form instead of Netflix series form. It features a ragtag group of children coming together to solve a supernatural problem in a very, very heavily 80s inspired story. Now, you may have loved Stranger Things and don't see this as a problem. But what if I told you that basically none of Stranger Things' strengths are present here. The kids are mostly wieners, there is no secondary adults story, there is a lack of depth to everything, and there's no cool score.
It is the story of a group of children suffering through life in small town USA and how they band together to overcome their fears and (presumably) grow as a result of their experiences. There's a wide cast of characters, the main kid (Lieberher), the glasses kid (Wolfhard), the hypochondriac kid (Jack Dylan Grazer), the Jew kid (Wyatt Oleff), the fat kid (Taylor), the Black kid (Chosen Jacobs) and the girl (Lillis). Now the film does take the effort to deepen these characters focusing mainly on Bill (main kid) who's younger brother was the first onscreen victim of Pennywise and Beverly (girl). Bill is a stutter who gets sick and is obsessed with finding his brother, convincing his friends to waste their precious summer days wandering the sewers instead of doing kid things. He's often portrayed as the strongest, bravest and smartest of the children and thus becomes the defacto leader of the group as he figures just about everything out and leads missions to find and kill Pennywise. Lieberher does not do a good job selling this at all, often falling back on the stuttering and completely overplaying it in an attempt to humanize this character. The writing certainly doesn't help with the movie seemingly bending over backwards to convince the audience that Bill is in the right role in this cast and deserves to be considered the lead when in fact he actually kinda sucks.
Beverly does not suck however. Continuing the comparison to Stranger Things, the group of boys befriend one girl and the girl turns out to be the most interesting, fascinating, well rounded character of the entire group. Beverly is the social outcast with a tumultuous home life who's aloofness is seen as coolness to those who don't know her but she is actually as much of a loser as the rest of the main cast. When Bill is not being portrayed as a sort of superchild leader, Beverly is often the character stepping into that role, taking leadership and displaying strength and Lillis does a much better job at it. It helps that her character's home life is the most well defined and gets the most screentime, giving her character a depth the others just don't receive. The rest of the children receive varying levels of depth to round out their characters from the hypochondriac's mother's overbearing impact on his life or the Black kid growing up on the outskirts of town possessing a tragic backstory to the glasses kid making sex jokes and saying the word "fuck" (because children making sex jokes and saying the word "fuck" is inherently hilarious according the theatre I saw this in) or the Jew kid having his Bar Mitzvah coming up and being scared of a painting.
The lack of depth and care that went into about half the main characters carries over completely to the minor characters and town itself. It is strange for the film to make such a big deal of the town' history and then not only do basically nothing with it (other than setting up a sequel) but also not develop the town at all. There was not sense that anything existed beyond a few houses, a pharmacist, a library and a creepy abandoned house that you can picture in your head because you've seen horror movies before. There do not even appear to be any residents of this town beyond the children, about 2 parents and a couple of bullies. This tightening of focus could be an effective approach if these minor characters are developed at all but they sadly aren't. The main bully figure gets a little development and depth but it doesn't matter. The couple of parents shown more than once (hypochondriac's mom and girl's dad) are just token figures existing for the sole reason of giving their children a step in their arcs. The writing attempts to provide depth at times and the film is structured with clear episodic breaks in such a way that it feels like this was originally envisioned as a miniseries but then hacked down to feature film length with almost all of the care going towards preserving the main story beats and horror scenes.
Gotta get those horror scenes. It's what the people pay for. And there's nothing people love more than flickering lights, dark shadows, creepy doors with squeaky hinges, and cuts to things popping up. Bonus points if there are ghosts and zombies and shit like that. You've seen generic Hollywood horror films before, they get released literally all the time. You already know if that shit actually affects you or not. It does studio horror competently. It does nothing outstanding and the only thing I can think of that is done poorly is the final fight with Pennywise. There's nothing unexpected in its horror craft and well judging from the box office returns, there doesn't need to be. If you like jump scares and creepy clowns and the soundtrack being cranked to eleven to let you know you should be scared then you'll find this film's horror effective.
Now, the clown. Bill Skarsgard does a good job portraying the creepy charm of Pennywise. His ability to entice children from the shadows and then scare the shit out of them is something Skarsgard absolutely excels at here. He is one of the highlights of this movie. There is great stuff to be mined from fat kid. He gets the most effective arc (except for one huge thing I want to talk about below the review) growing from schlubby outsider to using his interests in history to help the gang to becoming a confident member of the group. Apart from the one thing I will talk about later, his arc is well done and clear highlight of the film. Another thing I'd like to highlight is the way member get added to the group. Fat kid, Girl, and Black kid all start the film as outsiders but then through convoluted and contrived ways they find themselves becoming friend with the rest. Their additions come across as perfectly natural though shining through the contrived setups. Aided by the great chemistry all the children have with each other, the addition of each subsequent member feels like the next step in the story.
It is a warmed over retread of tired 80s tropes re-popularized by Stranger Things but done less than half as well. It features some striking imagery but not nearly enough to be completely memorable (the poster itself contains every memorable pictorial element in the film) to overcome its poor attempts to craft a well rounded group of characters, its poor world building, and its generic horror craft. It is not a movie built to surprise viewers. It is a movie meant to comfort viewers with nostalgic horror. It is the rollercoaster in your hometown that was terrifying as a child but as an adult you find it small and slow.
Schurmann Score - 1/10
BONUS IT COVERAGE:
So that thing I wanted to talk about. I could have thrown this into the review because while technically a spoiler it doesn't really affect the whole arc of the film but it would have been derailing.
So from the very first time we see him, fat kid and Beverly have a thing. Then Beverly joins the group and Bill starts developing a thing for Beverly. Children's love triangle. Then the movie spends essentially the rest of its running time telling us, in the most blatant manner possible, that Beverly and Fat kid are the compatible couple. He writes her a poem she saves in her underwear drawer. They bond over his secret love of New Kids on the Block. He even kisses her unconscious body to revive her! But then who does she kiss at the end of the movie. Fucking stupid Bill. Why? This is incompetency on the filmmakers part to a level Jaeden Lieberher was surely accustomed to on the set of The Book of Henry. Why is it here? I didn't like this movie, but it was at least mostly competent. I don't even know why I'm that mad about it. Ugh.
BONUS BONUS IT COVERAGE:
Since Bill is played by Jaeden Lieberher who played the immortal Henry in The Book of Henry (which if you haven't seen it, you are missing out on the cinematic experience of 2017) and I was mostly bored by everything his character was doing here, I started imagining It as a sequel to The Book of Henry entited The Boat of Henry.
After the events of The Book of Henry (no spoilers here, you need to see this movie), Henry builds a time machine and travels back to 1989 and worms his way into a new family. He even forms a stupidly special bond with a new baby brother. He also develops a stutter solely to throw off any authorities that would be looking for him. This new baby brother dies but Henry can not fathom failure of any kind so he assumes his brother is still alive and uses his massively superior intellect to recruit his friends into a search and rescue mission. This is also why he is the charismatic, genius leader of the Losers. Basically then shit happens, he figures Pennywise's shit out and wins. He then steals the girl from fat kid because he's fucking Henry and Sarah Silverman isn't around.
So yeah, if you're not going to enjoy It you can at least enjoy The Boat of Henry.
It is Stranger Things with an R-rating told in movie form instead of Netflix series form. It features a ragtag group of children coming together to solve a supernatural problem in a very, very heavily 80s inspired story. Now, you may have loved Stranger Things and don't see this as a problem. But what if I told you that basically none of Stranger Things' strengths are present here. The kids are mostly wieners, there is no secondary adults story, there is a lack of depth to everything, and there's no cool score.
It is the story of a group of children suffering through life in small town USA and how they band together to overcome their fears and (presumably) grow as a result of their experiences. There's a wide cast of characters, the main kid (Lieberher), the glasses kid (Wolfhard), the hypochondriac kid (Jack Dylan Grazer), the Jew kid (Wyatt Oleff), the fat kid (Taylor), the Black kid (Chosen Jacobs) and the girl (Lillis). Now the film does take the effort to deepen these characters focusing mainly on Bill (main kid) who's younger brother was the first onscreen victim of Pennywise and Beverly (girl). Bill is a stutter who gets sick and is obsessed with finding his brother, convincing his friends to waste their precious summer days wandering the sewers instead of doing kid things. He's often portrayed as the strongest, bravest and smartest of the children and thus becomes the defacto leader of the group as he figures just about everything out and leads missions to find and kill Pennywise. Lieberher does not do a good job selling this at all, often falling back on the stuttering and completely overplaying it in an attempt to humanize this character. The writing certainly doesn't help with the movie seemingly bending over backwards to convince the audience that Bill is in the right role in this cast and deserves to be considered the lead when in fact he actually kinda sucks.
Beverly does not suck however. Continuing the comparison to Stranger Things, the group of boys befriend one girl and the girl turns out to be the most interesting, fascinating, well rounded character of the entire group. Beverly is the social outcast with a tumultuous home life who's aloofness is seen as coolness to those who don't know her but she is actually as much of a loser as the rest of the main cast. When Bill is not being portrayed as a sort of superchild leader, Beverly is often the character stepping into that role, taking leadership and displaying strength and Lillis does a much better job at it. It helps that her character's home life is the most well defined and gets the most screentime, giving her character a depth the others just don't receive. The rest of the children receive varying levels of depth to round out their characters from the hypochondriac's mother's overbearing impact on his life or the Black kid growing up on the outskirts of town possessing a tragic backstory to the glasses kid making sex jokes and saying the word "fuck" (because children making sex jokes and saying the word "fuck" is inherently hilarious according the theatre I saw this in) or the Jew kid having his Bar Mitzvah coming up and being scared of a painting.
The lack of depth and care that went into about half the main characters carries over completely to the minor characters and town itself. It is strange for the film to make such a big deal of the town' history and then not only do basically nothing with it (other than setting up a sequel) but also not develop the town at all. There was not sense that anything existed beyond a few houses, a pharmacist, a library and a creepy abandoned house that you can picture in your head because you've seen horror movies before. There do not even appear to be any residents of this town beyond the children, about 2 parents and a couple of bullies. This tightening of focus could be an effective approach if these minor characters are developed at all but they sadly aren't. The main bully figure gets a little development and depth but it doesn't matter. The couple of parents shown more than once (hypochondriac's mom and girl's dad) are just token figures existing for the sole reason of giving their children a step in their arcs. The writing attempts to provide depth at times and the film is structured with clear episodic breaks in such a way that it feels like this was originally envisioned as a miniseries but then hacked down to feature film length with almost all of the care going towards preserving the main story beats and horror scenes.
Gotta get those horror scenes. It's what the people pay for. And there's nothing people love more than flickering lights, dark shadows, creepy doors with squeaky hinges, and cuts to things popping up. Bonus points if there are ghosts and zombies and shit like that. You've seen generic Hollywood horror films before, they get released literally all the time. You already know if that shit actually affects you or not. It does studio horror competently. It does nothing outstanding and the only thing I can think of that is done poorly is the final fight with Pennywise. There's nothing unexpected in its horror craft and well judging from the box office returns, there doesn't need to be. If you like jump scares and creepy clowns and the soundtrack being cranked to eleven to let you know you should be scared then you'll find this film's horror effective.
Now, the clown. Bill Skarsgard does a good job portraying the creepy charm of Pennywise. His ability to entice children from the shadows and then scare the shit out of them is something Skarsgard absolutely excels at here. He is one of the highlights of this movie. There is great stuff to be mined from fat kid. He gets the most effective arc (except for one huge thing I want to talk about below the review) growing from schlubby outsider to using his interests in history to help the gang to becoming a confident member of the group. Apart from the one thing I will talk about later, his arc is well done and clear highlight of the film. Another thing I'd like to highlight is the way member get added to the group. Fat kid, Girl, and Black kid all start the film as outsiders but then through convoluted and contrived ways they find themselves becoming friend with the rest. Their additions come across as perfectly natural though shining through the contrived setups. Aided by the great chemistry all the children have with each other, the addition of each subsequent member feels like the next step in the story.
It is a warmed over retread of tired 80s tropes re-popularized by Stranger Things but done less than half as well. It features some striking imagery but not nearly enough to be completely memorable (the poster itself contains every memorable pictorial element in the film) to overcome its poor attempts to craft a well rounded group of characters, its poor world building, and its generic horror craft. It is not a movie built to surprise viewers. It is a movie meant to comfort viewers with nostalgic horror. It is the rollercoaster in your hometown that was terrifying as a child but as an adult you find it small and slow.
Schurmann Score - 1/10
BONUS IT COVERAGE:
So that thing I wanted to talk about. I could have thrown this into the review because while technically a spoiler it doesn't really affect the whole arc of the film but it would have been derailing.
So from the very first time we see him, fat kid and Beverly have a thing. Then Beverly joins the group and Bill starts developing a thing for Beverly. Children's love triangle. Then the movie spends essentially the rest of its running time telling us, in the most blatant manner possible, that Beverly and Fat kid are the compatible couple. He writes her a poem she saves in her underwear drawer. They bond over his secret love of New Kids on the Block. He even kisses her unconscious body to revive her! But then who does she kiss at the end of the movie. Fucking stupid Bill. Why? This is incompetency on the filmmakers part to a level Jaeden Lieberher was surely accustomed to on the set of The Book of Henry. Why is it here? I didn't like this movie, but it was at least mostly competent. I don't even know why I'm that mad about it. Ugh.
BONUS BONUS IT COVERAGE:
Since Bill is played by Jaeden Lieberher who played the immortal Henry in The Book of Henry (which if you haven't seen it, you are missing out on the cinematic experience of 2017) and I was mostly bored by everything his character was doing here, I started imagining It as a sequel to The Book of Henry entited The Boat of Henry.
After the events of The Book of Henry (no spoilers here, you need to see this movie), Henry builds a time machine and travels back to 1989 and worms his way into a new family. He even forms a stupidly special bond with a new baby brother. He also develops a stutter solely to throw off any authorities that would be looking for him. This new baby brother dies but Henry can not fathom failure of any kind so he assumes his brother is still alive and uses his massively superior intellect to recruit his friends into a search and rescue mission. This is also why he is the charismatic, genius leader of the Losers. Basically then shit happens, he figures Pennywise's shit out and wins. He then steals the girl from fat kid because he's fucking Henry and Sarah Silverman isn't around.
So yeah, if you're not going to enjoy It you can at least enjoy The Boat of Henry.
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