A little disappointing

Rating: 5/10 (8 September 2019)

I'll admit that I set my expectations a little high after the first one, but even then, there were several things about this movie that were rather disappointing. The first one was great, a true horror movie. This one was more of a dark fantasy, kind of like the movie "Pan's Labyrinth". One of the biggest issues is that for some reason, it kept throwing in needless and pointless humor. Sometimes it was a character making a comedic remark, sometimes it was just a scene itself that came across as comedic. This unnecessary comedy really underplays a lot of stuff in the movie, making scary scenes less scary and making serious scenes less serious and impactful (such as the random 'Angel Of The Morning' moment). I really don't know why they did that. Sometimes those comedic scenes were unintentional, but many were.
I was also disappointed with some of the characters. Eddie, Ritchie, and Ben came across as bitter and angry a lot of the time. Ben especially, and he had this possessive, jealous air about him towards Beverly. Speaking of which, I didn't buy the romance between them, at least not on Bev's end. Ben was in love with her since childhood, which was fine, but Bev was completely in love with Bill since childhood, and even when they were adults. But then she suddenly and immediately falls for Ben because... she found out he wrote her a poem one time. All of a sudden, the feelings she had for Bill (even having known that he hadn't written the poem) suddenly disappear, and she's suddenly completely into Ben, whom she never once saw as a romantic interest, as a kid or as an adult. At least in the book it kept her feelings towards him ambiguous, but this came almost completely out of the blue on her end.
They also added a bunch of stuff, like the characters needing to find tokens, which wasn't in the book or mini-series. This addition not only went nowhere, and therefore was completely pointless, it took up so much time in a movie that was already nearly 3 hours. They also completely omitted certain character roles that could have and should have played much bigger parts. I understand that cuts were necessary since the movie was almost 3 hours, but then why add unnecessary plots elements to begin with, especially when they could have filled them in with the characters and events they cut? And then there's was the climax. While not bad, it felt rather over the top, you know, just a little too Hollywood, not quite right for this type of horror movie.
I know this may sound like I'm bashing the movie, but that's not necessarily the case. It was a passable movie that I enjoyed, but I felt like it could have and should have been so much more than what they did with it.