Movie Review: Stephen King's it (1990)

Stephen King is a successful author, writing many popular horror's such as 'Carrie', 'The Shining' and of course, 'IT.' 

But firstly what is 'it' about? To put it quite bluntly, 'it' is about a monster, a thing, an 'it' that lives in the sewers, and comes out of drains to terrorise and kill children- well, that is what 'it' is. but the main plot revolves around seven children, and their encounters with it. The plot is put well by IMDb. "In 1960, seven outcast kids known as "The Loser Club" fight an evil demon who poses as a child-killing clown. 30 years later, they are called back to fight the same clown again"
But what is it? at the beginning of the movie, 'it' is revealed to be a clown, named 'Pennywise, the dancing clown' (Pennywise is played by my favourite actor -yep, you guessed it- Tim Curry)
Pennywise is described in the novel to look like a mixture of Bozo, Clarabell and Ronald Mcdonald, in order to lure children. The movie sticks to this description well, making pennywise look like the exact image.


The movie of 'It' mostly stuck to the novel, but missed out many gory-details. Some parts of the movie missed out crucial detail, making the movie rather confusing and without-detail. A key example of this is the death of the character 'Eddie'. His death is outlined in the novel, but is un-noticable in the movie, in fact, if I hadn't read the novel beforehand, I would not have known that this main character had died at all. Perhaps much content was left out, in order to keep IT to the rating of '15', however, I feel that the movie could have added a little more detail.

The movie has a large cast, who represent the characters they play well. I feel that both adult cast, and young cast played the individual characters well, and was suprised to find that the many of the young cast turned in to successful actors. A key example of this, is 'Seth Green'. Seth Green played the young Richie Tozier, a comical character in the plot. Seth Green grew up to be in many comedy's, including Scot in Austin Powers, and the voice of 'Chris Griffin' in Family Guy. Seth Green used his comical skills to play Richie Tozier, but also showed his serious side.
Also, talented acting skills were used by Tim Curry to play Pennywise the dancing clown. Tim Curry uses many unique expressions and mannerisms when playing Pennywise, and really adds to the creepy vibe of the clown. The use of facepaint on Tim Curry as Pennywise, really hid the actor, and showed the character. No matter how many times I searched Pennywise's face, I just could not see Tim Curry behind the clown. This is also partly because of Tim Curry's skills, and character motivation. Along with Seth Green and Tim Curry were other amazing actors and actresses (24 others, in fact) that helped bring the movie to life.

Many aspects of the film were fantastic, the graphics, lighting, acting, soundtrack and costume all equally helped to make the movie a great interpretation of the novel, and I would reccomend it to be watched, however, though the movie is good, it has no comparison to the novel (as most movies don't) and I would reccomend reading the novel beforehand, in order to avoid confusion.