I wanted to float too.

Rating: 6/10 (11 September 2017)

Maybe all of the critical acclaim for this movie set my expectations too high and if I watch it again with no expectation, it will be a better experience. I walked into the theater expecting to absolutely love this, but I only kind of liked it. Not a bad movie by any means but with that said, I don't find all of the praise for this movie to be warranted either.
Before making criticisms, I do want to say that the cast here is phenomenal and everybody involved delivered a quality performance, especially the kids. Every character has their own distinctive personality and the cast members have great chemistry together. Another thing I enjoyed about this movie was it's sense of humor. There are a lot of good laugh out loud moments throughout the film so it never really gets dry.
But... AH. The CGI! The special effects are so cheesy and over the top that it completely ruined the scare factor for me. I've seen movies from the 70's with more realistic looking special effects than this. Cheesy special effects wouldn't be a big deal if they were only in one or two scenes but unfortunately, they are prominent in nearly every "scary" scene there is. In addition to that, all of the horror elements incorporated here are simply regurgitated horror clichés that we have all seen a million times before, like Pennywise constantly jumping out at the camera. It didn't scare me or make me jump, it just made me roll my eyes.
This movie took everything that was good about the original miniseries and exploited it for cheap scares. In the original miniseries, "you'll float too" was a genuinely creepy line. Now that line has been turned into a catch phrase and ran into the ground.
All complaints aside, I did enjoy myself and had a blast watching it. Although I found myself getting a little bored during the "scary" parts, everything else about this movie is terrific so I'm giving it a 6 out of 10. With a little more subtlety, this would have been a strong 8.
Just my honest opinion, thanks for reading.