Common Sense Note
Parents need to know that the plot of this made-for-TV Stephen King adaptation centers on a long series of unsolved child murders, and while the worst of the nasty stuff is kept offscreen, there are still apparitions of semi-decayed juvenile ghosts, a werewolf, a fanged clown, and other monsters. Blood is shown frequently, gurgling out of drains and splashed around the community, but it's "supernatural" blood, only visible to the terrorized heroes and not other people.
Families can talk about the theme of friendship among the outcast kids in the movie and how it creates a secret world for them, one which (unlike the town's mainstream society of adults) allows them to perceive more clearly the menace of Pennywise and devise a plan to fight him. The plot continually hops across a 30-year timespan, seeing these characters both as grown ups and children. Parents can talk about reunions with their own old friends and the importance of staying in touch (whether to defend against evil demons or for slightly more sentimental reasons).
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Charles Cassady, Jr.
Imagine The Goonies fighting Freddy Krueger as kids and later reuniting as grown ups in the sequel. That sums up IT, a so-so three-hour-plus horror feature that was originally a TV miniseries based on a slab-thick Stephen King novel.
The setting, far less vivid than in King's detailed prose, is the mythical town of Derry, Maine, where a supernatural curse of some kind (it's never really defined in the movie; it's just It) has caused waves of violence, murders, and disappearances -- mostly of children -- since colonial times. The story opens with a widely scattered group of adults -- who were once a tight-knit bunch of Derry kids -- getting simple but deeply disturbing phone summons from Mike Hanlon (Tim Reid), the town librarian.
He wants to hold them to a pledge they all made back in 1958, when they once battled It together. They promised that if It ever resurfaced, they would reunite and fight. Now more children are disappearing or being found horribly mutilated, and Mike intends to keep that vow.
Like the book, the movie contains constant flashbacks (sometimes repetitious ones, to keep the TV viewer up on the story over successive nights and commercial breaks) between the present (the 1980s) and 1958. Thus we see that successful architect Ben Hanscombe (John Ritter) was once a fat, bullied kid nicknamed Haystack, prominent fashion designer Beverly Marsh (Annette O'Toole) was a physically abused daughter, and so forth. In fact, their adolescent clique was called "the Losers," and they were constantly tormented by leather-jacketed town bully Henry Bowers (Michael Cole) and his creepy followers.
But a worse threat soon materializes, a demonic clown called Pennywise (Tim Curry), who first kills the little brother of future successful novelist-scriptwriter George (Richard Thomas). Both in 1958 and in the present, Pennywise taunts the various Losers and assumes the shapes of their worst fears. Too bad It was made before computer graphics came into wide Hollywood use. That might have worked better than the stiff puppetry and stop-motion that depict such hallucinatory horrors as Pennywise squeezing out of tiny drains (lurking in sewers and drainage works seems to be his specialty) and turning into monsters.
Director Tommy Lee Wallace makes some of these shocks work (the 1958 showdown between Pennywise and Henry Bowers is suspensefully rendered), and it's interesting seeing young actors (like Seth Green) matched against the adult ones (like Harry Anderson) playing the same part. But the ponderous nature of the twin-timelined material makes this a long trip. And, besides being a metaphor for the adversities of youth, what exactly is Pennywise, anyway? Reading 1,000 pages of Stephen King to find out -- now that's a frightful prospect.
A lot of this kid-talk, fellowship, and bonding in extreme circumstances recalls a much better movie derived from Stephen King's non-horror writing, Stand by Me. For another spooky King-based miniseries whose chills translated somewhat more successfully from prose to screen, check out Salem's Lot.
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentSeveral characters start romantic liaisons but never finish them. Rather out of the blue, a grown man admits (regretfully) to being a virgin. |
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ViolenceMuch blood -- erupting through sewers and out of exploded balloons. But it's "supernatural" blood, in that most people can't see it -- only the terrorized heroes. Kids bully, beat, and threaten each other with knives. A man is found dead in a tub (a suicide who slashed his wrists). A wife is slapped by her abusive husband. One character is stabbed. Rocks thrown at people and monsters. |
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LanguagePrime-time profanities like "bastard," "son of a bitch" and the "n" word. |
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Social BehaviorOn the one hand, there's a killer clown. On the other the protagonists are decent-hearted kids that support one another in youth and adulthood against bullies, bad parents, and worse. Only the lone female in the bunch seems to have taken her childhood traumas visibly into adulthood, marrying an abusive man. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoSocial drinking, or drinking to calm nerves after a demonic attack. One girl's father is an abusive drunk. |
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