There's a real knack to nostalgia; like crack, adrenalin or in my case cake, too much and you end up wallowing around your teenage years wondering why girls didn't like you and why everyone was obsessed with Puma at the time. Woe betide you if you ever wore Gola or heaven forfend Hi-Tec and their close-to-a- Reebok-lawsuit swish which was just not close enough. I haven't been a teenager for more years than I was an actual teenager (do the maths) but I think the principle is the same , the logos have just changed. Still, we all like to go back and have a gentle sob over how horrendous our haircuts were when we were younger, it's OK. It's healthy. In small doses.
I mention this only because I had an accidental near miss when I went to the cinema I used to frequent as a significantly less hirsute but still just as socially awkward youth. I saw all the classics here; Jurassic Park, Back to the Future III, Evil Dead 3, Ace Ventura; When Nature Calls, Beavis and Butthead Do America (twice), Joe vs The Volcano amongst others. The company has changed, the ticketing system is lamentably much more computerised, but the bricks, mortar, carpets and state of the toilets had barely changed in some 25 years. The seats were roughly as uncomfortable as well, but it was ridiculously cheap and they had a promotion on giant Coca Cola cups if you bought a popcorn combo and I'm a sucker for that sort of thing as my aluminium Optimus Prime popcorn tub and Rogue One cup will attest to.
I haven't been to an Odeon cinema in what seems forever (Showcase Deluxe are my local and are probably the best in my opinion). I feel like I might have seen Interstellar at an Odeon, but actually it was probably a Vue and had the shittiest seats I've had to sit in for a 3 hour stretch ever. You can imagine my surprise then when the overly cheery voice of some handsomely paid voiceover actor starts being all pally about me switching of my phone because he doesn't like distractions either. He whines excitedly about the trailers, then reminds us about the phones we should have already switched off and does so in such a nauseatingly patronising fashion that it genuinely makes me wonder if they made him do it under duress. No actual human speaks to their mates like that, no matter what the marketing firm thinks. Jog on Odeon boy.
Prattling aside (great name for a granny-themed emo band. I called it here first) this is a blog about movies, so perhaps it would be wise to get on with things.
I have been quietly looking forward to watching the IT remake since the trailer came out. I've spoken about the original previously (https://angerinamansuit.blogspot.com/2017/04/tears-of-clownspiderdemonenergy.html) and the waves of teeth-blackening nostalgia that inspired. Reviews were good and I felt like this might be the first remake to live up to or even surpass its predecessor. You know what...
IT is.
There were a lot of shenanigans to get to this point: the previous director left, most of the cast left too, the script was re-written etc and ordinarily you might think that was a bad thing. That would be until you realise that Andy Muschietti actually cares about the story not just getting his name out there and was determined to put stuff from the book back into the script, not least changing the names of the kids back to the originals rather than the inexplicably altered ones Cary Fukanaga had decided to go with.
If anything this version owes a lot to the success of Stranger Things. People are gobbling up the eighties retro thing at the moment, which ordinarily would wind me up a treat (I grew up in the eighties, it really wasn't as awesome as you might think), but it actually really works for this story; the kids portion is in the 80s so the adult side of things will be contemporary and it fits well. There's also a healthy Goonies vibe to things which you can look at two ways. It's either great as an homage or pointless as this isn't a kids movie by any shake of the stick, but I quite liked it. The actors they got on board were all pretty good and gelled together nicely; The Loser's Club actually did feel like a gang of kids hanging out so hats off. Let's face it though, IT lives or dies on the strength of Pennywise.
Tim Curry did such a fantastic job in the mini-series. Legendary, if you will. Bill Skarsgård is a very different but equally unsettling kettle of fish. Unkettling? No? Whatever. He drools, he stomps around like a toddler and is clearly having a riot. You can't help but compare the two performances but that's unfair. When it comes down to IT, there needed to be a much less campy, much more modern play on things and that's what you have. There are some genuinely unnerving moments interwoven between the fairly obvious jump scares, some of them coming from secondary villains such as the sociopathic Henry Bowers or Beverly's Dad who is such a horrendous piece of shit that you really want to applaud when he gets his come-uppance with the horror movie bathroom equivalent of a chair shot to the face. Porcelain cistern lids apparently much less dainty than your average tea set it would appear.
IT isn't without its flaws though. There are some shots in there which look specifically designed just for 3D. Lunging clowns, lepers and assorted supernatural miscreants which I'm sure have all been rendered exhaustively by a team of very talented individuals but how has 3D been around this long and directors not worked out how to use it subtly? It sort of works when Pennywise climbs out of the projector, but it still feels like it's only been put there for the 3D version. The biggest problem isn't actually with this film, it's with the next one. Be honest; we all know the kids half of this story is the best and now it's done with. The adult bit is way less fun so there's a real concern that it isn't going to work as well. Moreover we have the prospect of a giant alien spider to look forward to. One thing's for sure, I'm watching part two with much more comfortable seating arrangements.
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