Impressive, rewarding re-boot of the epic King tale

Rating: 9/10 (10 September 2017)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
In the small town of Derry, Maine in the 1980s, a series of children have gone missing, including (through creative licence) George, the younger brother of Bill Denbrough. Bill is one of a group of kids who've banded together and called themselves The Losers Club, due to their respective characteristics that make them social outcasts. Whilst they dodge various obstacles, including school bullies and abusive adults, they are drawn into a battle with the perpetrator of the missing children, a demonic clown named Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard), who only they can see through their youthful minds.
Well, in recent times it's harder to think of a project that has generated quite as much anticipation as Andy Muschetti's big screen adaptation of Stephen King's 1986 novel, which the near breakdown of the internet on the uploading of the first teaser trailer bears testament to. After years of speculation and lingering in 'development hell', to the point where it almost seemed it would never be made, finally it is here. It will have the biggest impact with big fans of the book, but, perhaps more significantly, of the original 1990 TV movie with Tim Curry (including myself), whose performance as the iconic Pennywise would seem impossible to better.
While Skarsgard doesn't better Curry's performance, in his own way he at least equals it, making the role his own and having an undeniable presence and charisma to be a scary Pennywise for a new generation, even if his costume does look like a Smiffy's Alice in Wonderland costume for clowns. Being a younger actor than Curry, he brings a more naïve, childlike persona to the role, and is a lot less frequent on the wisecracks. Comparing the two performances, there's definitely a Jack Nicholson/Heath Ledger thing going on, with Muschetti aiming for something more darker, from the central performance and from the material, displaying far more gruesome and unsettling things from the book that the 90s TV film wouldn't allow, not to mention more extreme swearing from the kids.
The shifting of the time period from the 1950s to the 1980s isn't a problem in and of itself, if you overlook the different social attitudes and customs, and one can only surmise Muschetti was trying to appeal to a more modern audience by doing it. Their different personalities made each of the seven losers so unique, and here the individual traits that made them who they are are explored in greater depth, something that extends to the bully Henry Bowers. And, Skarsgard's performance allows Pennywise to blossom into a truly solid character of his own.
Unlike the individual flashback to childhood from adulthood segments of the original series, this tells the childhood part of the story all at once, for a flat out 135 minutes, something Muschetti will probabl repeat with part two. On the basis of this, that's something we can all look forward to. ****