Exceeded my expectations!

Rating: 10/10 (13 September 2019)

For all the naysayers, you seem to come in two categories-those who are fans of the book, and those who have never read a Stephen King story in their life.
To the fans, of course the films are not 100% true to the books-that would be impossible without making the film a week long in duration. Every adaptation has huge chunks taken out and new, dramatic scenes placed in.
To those that have never read any of Kings work, this is NOT a sequel. It's the second part of 1 story. The novel is written as a back and forth between childhood and adulthood, this would be impossible to play out on screen so it was written in two chapters instead. IT is a beast of a novel, so it would also be impossible to condense the story into one 2.5 hour film.
Now for my review...
Wow. Just wow!
I went into this with extremely high hopes for two reasons. 1, I'm a huge fan of the book-it might be my favourite novel of all time, and 2, the first chapter was outstanding! I was not disappointed!
Any adaptation of a much loved story is always a little nerve wracking, in case they fail spectacularly in their vision-but as far as I'm concerned they hit all the right notes this time! I loved the original adaptation, it was terrifying at the time, but much of the humour from the book was missing. This time around it's all there. Of course some of my favourite parts were missing, but they included most of the important ones.
The casting is outstanding, they managed to find children and adults who do actually bear strong resemblances to each other. Bill Hader as adult Ritchie is absolutely genius, the funniest lines in the film all belong to him and his younger counterpart Finn Wolfhard.
It's hard to say any more without rambling on for days, but I will say this: Never in my life have I laughed so hard whilst also hiding behind my hands out of terror.
That, and spot the cameo!