The real evil clown is screenwriter Gary Dauberman, not Pennywise.

Rating: 5/10 (10 September 2019)

With the movie already having almost a thousand user reviews on IMDb I guess not many people are going to read this, but nonetheless here we go. After liking It (2017) very much I had high expectations for this movie, especially since the official cast was revealed.
It Chapter Two starts well for the most part, but as the movie unfolds you soon start to realize that some of the adult characters are pretty much the same as their younger selves, and it seems that they haven't matured at all in 27 years. I understand that the adult characters had to be 'recognizable' for the audience to re-establish the emotional link we had with the kids from the previous film, but you really CANNOT write a kids dialogue intended for adult characters that are supposed to be grown-up and mature human beings.
The screenplay of the first film, written by Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga & Gary Dauberman, worked very well because of these two main reasons: 1) the lines of dialogue were INTENDED for kids and 2) because Gary 'evil clown' Dauberman did the least amount of writing on it. I don't know what happened that Chase Palmer and Cary Fukunaga were not brought back together to work on the screenplay for It Chapter Two, and letting Gary 'evil clown' Dauberman take the wheel on his own is probably one of the worst decisions Warner Bros has ever made. Because of his sloppy, careless and lame writing It Chapter Two suffers tonal inconsistencies and misplaced humor throughout most of the film, and it is definitely not Andy Muschietti's fault as I'm sure as a director he did his best to keep the script's tonal mess at a minimum.
The actors did pretty well with the material they were given, but for me the standouts were definitely Jessica Chastain as Beverly, Jay Ryan as Ben and Andy Bean as Stanley (although his presence was fleeting). Bill SkarsgÃ¥rd was once again great as Pennywise although, because of the dumb dialogue by Gary 'evil clown' Dauberman, at times it sounded like a completely different character. In addition, Teach Grant was surprisingly good as an adult Henry Bowers. The kids were all fantastic once again. On the other hand, we all know that James McAvoy is a great actor, but he really needed to work on his North American English accent a bit more here, as in some instances you can hear his Scottish accent creeping in. Unfortunately, I have to say that Isaiah Mustafa, Bill Hader and James Ransone delivered the weakest performances of the movie. I can't understand how you can give dramatic crying scenes (exactly four of them) to a comedic actor that has stated before in interviews that cannot cry in front of a camera.
The overuse of CGI was annoying at times, and that was one of my main complaints with the previous film as well. Cinematography, editing, sound and music were all great. Benjamin Wallfisch crafted a truly beautiful score for both movies, and definitely elevated some of the scenes by making them more emotionally powerful, especially in the first film.
All in all I was disappointed with It Chapter Two, and it was mostly due to the sloppy and careless writing of Gary 'evil clown' Dauberman.