King's "Gravity's Rainbow" shouldn't be a 2-hr. movie!

Rating: 1/10 (10 September 2017)

I walked out. When the clown's terrifying, and the kid's talking to him anyway -- in a sewer, no less -- what do you think's going to happen? Oddly, there's no tension, and with the unconvincing CGI effects (the kid's arm torn off and the rain pouring down) it's like you're supposed to sit there passively and watch a summary of the story go by. Is the kid stupid? Is he scared ... even a little? It all seems so predetermined, like they're so intimidated by King's novel they just gave up and run you through a "best of" summary of scenes, and hope it'll stick.
I read the book when I was 14, the first hardcover I ever got (as a Christmas present) and it took me all of Christmas break to read before I went back to school (which is how I knew I could get through "War and Peace" in a week's time when I was in college -- that experience came in handy!). Someone calling it "the Moby-Dick of horror novels" on the new tie-in edition is apt, I think. It really goes go all over the place, and takes that long, and takes that much, to put across the story. One of the things I always resented about the TV mini-series version (which I didn't bother checking out) is that the "IT" thing is unnameable, and only takes a clown form as a convenience -- it's fully explicated, and crucial. Once you harp on the clown, forget it.