In for a Pennywise, Out for a Clown

It – SPOILERS! (Do I need to put in the warning, or is that not something people bother with anymore?) I’ve never read the book (or anything by Stephen King, actually), but I did see the miniseries some time ago. I didn’t realize before coming into it that this was only half the story, but it makes sense considering how much there is. My first thought when seeing the new Pennywise was that he was way over the top, and this might have been a case where less is more.

Having seen the movie, he was generally too silly to be particularly scary, although the stuff going on around him tended to make up for it in terms of creepiness. There were a lot of weirdly eerie scenes. Really, though, the most disturbing parts involved the psychotic bullies, one of whom tried to carve his name in another kid’s belly with a switchblade, and later almost shot a cat. You could kind of root for Pennywise to kill them. Insane bullies are pretty common in the films I’ve seen based on King’s stories; regular bullies are bad enough, but these tend to be downright murderous. There are also a lot of parents who are abusive in various ways. Don’t you think that, after your parents were burned to death in the same house you were in, you might be rather squeamish about killing sheep? Then again, the grandfather was also probably still in mourning to some extent. I did find it odd that the kid who lived on a farm was home-schooled; I don’t know how his grandfather would have had the time (or the money, if he hired a tutor) for that. I was told that the kid with asthma did take placebos because his mom had Munchausen by Proxy (maybe not specifically identified as such, but that sounds like what it was) in the book, but it’s strange that the one who revealed that information in this movie was some weird girl at the drugstore. What reason would he have to believe her? It seems like Pennywise went down pretty easily in the end as well, although of course he’s not totally gone. But anyway, I think it was an effective film, and the performances were good. Also, they played the first verse of XTC’s “Dear God,” and a poster in Beverly’s room mentioned the Young Fresh Fellows (opening for the Replacements). I would think they should have used Modest Mouse, not because I’m a fan but because, you know, we’ll all float on, okay.