Meh: Neither Here Nor There

Rating: 5/10 (16 November 2017)

Saw the new "It" last night and was completely underwhelmed. Neither here nor there. A superfluous re-make. Unnecessary.
Whereas the original It was subtle, the remake was heavy-handed. While the original used suspense, the remake showed gore. If the original was "smart", the remake wasn't very clever.
A huge beef I have is that Pennywise has far, far too many lines in the remake. In the opening scene, he speaks with Georgie for several minutes. Jesus - enough already! We get it. Clown, teeth, scary. We know already. Why keep talking in that annoying voice? Another complaint: Pennywise overacts. He tries too hard in the human acting and the CGI tries too hard in the contortion/weirdness. It's not "natural", and I think the overacting is a natural result of being given way too many lines.
I was substantially disappointed with this effort. I felt it was a bit lazy...like the 3 screenwriters just threw their ideas together in an afternoon and that was that.
Listen...when you remake a classic film, it has to be all guns blazing. It has to be perfect. This was far from the case. It was a trite affair, entirely superfluous.
One final thing: the film relies on clichés - "don't go into the basement", scary abandoned house, the bullies/the bullied. We've seen these clichés 10 million times...they write themselves...is there no room for something fresh or original here? Come on. Again, it's lazy. Clichés are easy, originality is hard.