Both Awesome and Underwhelming At The Same Time

Rating: 8/10 (10 September 2019)

This was without a doubt one of the years most anticipated horror movies for most people, including myself, a life-long lover of Stephen King and definitely a fan of the 2017's "It". While I did enjoy this, I'm not gonna lie, "It: Chapter 2" wasn't the movie I wanted it to be.
I want to emphasize the hits of this movie before the misses, because they're quite strong. The first, a very sure hit, is the acting, pretty much all of the performances are mildly perfect - it was amazing to watch such a stellar cast working together (and also alone & apart, for at least half of the screen time...). Hader, McAvoy, Ransone, and, of course, Skarsgard are the absolute highlights. While the acting is top-notch, the character treatment is questionable. Specifically the treatment of Pennywise - there was less of him here than in the 1st part, and it also felt like he's much more ...unimportant. I think there was unused potential to give Bill more screen time to shine. Give him more substance. The next hit of "It: Chapter 2" is cinematography and FX. Sure, a lot of people (way too many actually) complain about the extensive use of cgi, but, in my humble opinion, it's the highest tier stuff, masterfully made and blended in with some practical FX and a truly crafty, imaginative cinematography. Another popular complaint is the pacing, here I beg to differ. It was not the pacing that bugged me, I felt like it went by at an even speed and there are quite a lot of shorter movies that have felt longer than this. What bugged me is what I consider this movies biggest miss - the script, the story. For me it seemed like the filmmakers aspired to put more in this than would actually work. "It: Chapter 2" made me confident in that the best way to adapt this novel is tv-series - 20 episodes, easily. The result of this script was a disjointed, choppy movie with a lot of scenes that felt unfinished and scenes that felt unnecessary or just plain confused. The most underwhelming moment (arguably) is the ending, or the climax. I don't usually give any spoilers, so I can only say that it was actually kinda lame. It's ironic that Stephen King often gets criticised for his endings & so does Bill's character (who's a writer) - Indeed the endings of both "It" and "It: Chapter 2" could be their weakest spots. Oh, and a nice bonus was a lengthy (for cameo standards) Stephen Kings cameo, the first cameo in a movie based on his writings since 1996's "Thinner".
Thankfully, I liked the movie a lot more than I didn't, if that makes sense. The ingredients were there, the promise, the potential, the hype, but something didn't quite click and the result was an awesome romp of ups and downs, but awesome is what matters. I'd like to think that there was a true effort and love put into making this. My rating: 8/10.