And given that his film stretches nearly three hours, he gets more than ample opportunity to show off all those tools. “It Chapter Two” can be a sprawling, unwieldy mess—overlong, overstuffed and full of frustrating detours—but its casting is so spot-on, its actors have such great chemistry and its monster effects are so deliriously ghoulish that the film keeps you hooked. You won’t check out entirely, but you will check your watch several times.
In adapting the second part of King’s nearly 1,200-page tome, returning writer Gary Dauberman is in a tricky spot: What to keep? What to cut? He does a bit of both while also incorporating moments from the first film as well as new scenes featuring the characters as kids to fill in some gaps. As in the original, “It Chapter Two” works best when the members of the self-proclaimed Losers Club are bouncing off each other, their banter infused with a sparkling mix of hormones, humor, insecurity and camaraderie. Unfortunately, Muschietti and Dauberman spend a lot of their time keeping their perfectly picked actors apart on individual adventures, which drags out the drama and slows down the momentum.
Just as the ending of the first film foreshadowed, though, the kids who escaped the villainous grasp of the evil clown Pennywise during the summer of 1989 have found themselves back in Derry, Maine—right on cue, 27 years later, to fight him again. They’d all gone their separate ways and carved out vastly different lives, and in introducing us to these characters as adults, Muschietti makes some gorgeous transitions that are smooth and inventive. But returning to their seemingly idyllic small town instantly revives their old rhythms and relationships.
Mike Hanlon (Isaiah Mustafa as an adult, Chosen Jacobs as a child) is the only one of the bunch who stayed in Derry; he’s the self-styled historian and the one who makes the fateful phone calls to round up his old pals when Pennywise resurfaces. Bill (James McAvoy/Jaeden Martell) has gone on to become a novelist whose latest book is being adapted into a film, one of several meta bits scattered throughout. Beverly (Jessica Chastain/Sophia Lillis), who endured a controlling, abusive relationship with her father, is now in a controlling, abusive relationship with her husband. Richie (Bill Hader/Finn Wolfhard) is a hard-drinking, trash-talking stand-up comic who’s as acerbic as ever. (Hader’s performance is the highlight within this terrific ensemble as he shows off his perfect comic timing as well as his deep dramatic chops.) Eddie (James Ransone/Jack Dylan Grazer) remains a neurotic hypochondriac who’s married to a woman who looks and sounds an awful lot like his smothering mother. And Ben (Jay Ryan/Jeremy Ray Taylor), who was both the poet and the brains of the group, shed his baby fat and transformed himself into a hunky, wealthy architect. Other than that, his defining character trait is the secret crush he still has on Beverly nearly three decades later; it grows a bit tedious.
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