Horror Movie, but not IT

Rating: 3/10 (15 September 2017)

I have had high hopes for this film for several years now. When I first read that it was being remade again I thought, "Finally!!! A new version of IT that will have to be better than that '90's TV debauchery with John Boy starring as Bill Denbrough." Now I will give Tim Curry HIGH praise for his performance in the TV miniseries version. Frankenfurter really nailed Pennywise perfectly. Also, the child actors in the TV version were fairly competent as well, and pretty much carried the movie, however, the adult, TV, so-called actors were abysmal at best. It was like; all the way through the movie I kept waiting for Richard Thomas to say, "Good night Maryellen, Good night Mama. . . " and then have Pennywise pop up and scream, "OH ROCKY!!!" The TV version has been tolerable to IT fans for many years because it has been all that there was. Finally, there was going to be a, much anticipated, and much desired, new feature film version.
The Steven King book, "IT" is an extremely well thought out, well developed, touching, tear jerking, interesting, scary, supernatural, epic of the lives of the seven losers in the story. It is probably tied with "11-22-63," and, "The Stand" as the best books he has ever written. (Also give honorable mention to "Dr. Sleep." It is incredible!) The reason that fantastic works of written fiction endure, and are still read many years later is simple; THEY"RE GOOD!!! That is the reason that they still want to make movies from the books. That is the reason that they still sell copies of it in the book stores, and have new dramatized audio book versions released. If only someone could do a movie and follow the book a bit more closely, then the movie would also be just as fantastic.
With all of this said, The 2017 Version of IT is fair at best. It seemed to me that they made a list of all the events that occurred in the children's lives in the book, Then moved it forward 27 years from the book, then kept those basic ideas and forgot about everything in the book and started a new story kinda sorta loosely biased on the book, then changed everything again to achieve a shallower, disjointed, CGI laden, jump-scare movie, about on par with some of the other mediocre horror movies that pop up every 15 minutes or so these days. They totally changed many of the characters into more stereotypical cookie cutter personas, and either changed, forgot, or ignored the significance of the characters to the story line. They also combined, cluttered, or ignored many of the significant points in the story line that were crucial to the plot, or development, or the reason the kids would ever embark on such an undertaking. So many details were left out or glossed over that were essential to the development of the story as a whole. If they had called the movie, "The Derry School Kids and the Killer Clown," that would have been fine. It would have been a more accurate title for what the movie actually is, and I would probably give it a better review now. BUT, if you are going to take an epic work like IT and put that same title on a movie, and purport to have the movie be based on the book, you'd better make sure you live up to the story.
If you have never read the book, "IT," then this will be a fairly middle of the road decent horror movie. If you HAVE read the book, then I can only say that the only thing the movie shares with the book is the TITLE.