Harry Anderson, Richard Thomas, Dennis Christopher, Tim Reid, Annette O'Toole, Tim Curry. Dir. Tommy Lee Wallace, Warner Bros., 1990
I had one problem with the 1990 TV movie (run over two nights back in '90, NBC called it a miniseries, but as a dvd-feature it runs three hours and six minutes, a little longer than Avengers:End Game) and it's a big one. I loved all the stuff with the cast as kids, in the first part. Only Seth Green among them went on to be household-name actors and their anonymity at this remove gave their performances a spontanaeity and freshness that helped me buy them as screen versions of the novel's characters. The adult versions, essayed by an ensemble of B-listers and small screen stars, however, didn't do much for me.
I'm willing to lay that off on a poor screenplay to some extent, but IT proves definitively that Harry Anderson, despite two hit sitcoms, cannot act. At all. It goes on to prove that Richard Thomas, Dennis Christopher, Annette O'Toole, & Tim Reid excel at playing a specific type of character and they fit those types to Stephen King's material reasonably well, but not remarkably. John Ritter's most famous role, Jack on Three's Company, makes me so angry my blood pressure spikes. I hate Three's Company with a belligerence I cannot hope to explain, only contain. As ever, I find John Ritter away from that show a delightful, strong, natural actor, and he's the standout here, to me.
There's a stereotype of the great, stage-trained British actor who redeems even the worst material, drawing good notices even in shit. We know it's a myth because someone cast Olivia Hussey as Audra Denbrough in IT. Sad to say, the first film version of Juliet I knew rivals Anderson's level of "how do these people have careers?"
Since the adults dominate the second 96 minutes of IT, not responding to them as characters makes giving the movie a glowing review problematic. Fortunately, at tge end of the movie I found that, if not the most dazzling performances ever, all served well enough that I found the movie affecting. Three hours and six minutes with even meh performances is enough to get me invested, especially since it's a story I know so well, one of King's last great '80s novels.
And what of Tim Curry as Pennywise the Dancing Clown, the performance I've heard about for lo, these 31 years? Now there's an interesting thing. I wasn't quite knocked out by Curry in the first half of the movie. It's not a bad performance, but it's not what I imagined based on what I heard. In the second half, however, when I found the adult cast weak, Curry's performance caught fire with me. He, John Ritter, and a handful of flashbacks to the kids kept me involved in the story when despairing and moving on to The Devil Wears Prada would have been easy.
IT exists at an interesting point in the evolution of Stephen King-movies. By 1990, Rob Reiner's Stand by Me had shown it was possible to be faithful to King's material and turn a profit. Early King adaptations tend to take the basic plot beats then change the characters and their motivations to suit the writer & director. Tommy Lee Wallace, working without the big studio advantages afforded Reiner, does a credible, faithful adaptation, which must be part of this movie's enduring popularity. IT excises massive chunks of the book, but hits every significant plot point, making it feel remarkably faithful then and now. The screenplay makes Richie more obnoxious, Eddie hostage to his Mom even as an adult, but the changes don't change the central ideas of the original story.
I've heard about the 1990 version, generally called the "Tim Curry version," since it aired 31 years ago. I remember being disinterested in it at the time. Only in recent years has its continued love, being reissued on dvd as a double-sided feature, made me more curious, as have the comparisons between the new version and the '90. I finished IT today not at all sorry to have finally seen it. Will I watch it again? I mean, I guess I would if a group of people wanted to screen it for nostalgia, but otherwise, probably not, no. It's not that kind of thing. It's reasonably fun, the stuff with the kids works great, and it stays true to King. I'm pleased to add it to my collection, which is a solid rave for King adaptations. A satisfying, long lasting Twinkie.
There's a stereotype of the great, stage-trained British actor who redeems even the worst material, drawing good notices even in shit. We know it's a myth because someone cast Olivia Hussey as Audra Denbrough in IT. Sad to say, the first film version of Juliet I knew rivals Anderson's level of "how do these people have careers?"
Since the adults dominate the second 96 minutes of IT, not responding to them as characters makes giving the movie a glowing review problematic. Fortunately, at tge end of the movie I found that, if not the most dazzling performances ever, all served well enough that I found the movie affecting. Three hours and six minutes with even meh performances is enough to get me invested, especially since it's a story I know so well, one of King's last great '80s novels.
And what of Tim Curry as Pennywise the Dancing Clown, the performance I've heard about for lo, these 31 years? Now there's an interesting thing. I wasn't quite knocked out by Curry in the first half of the movie. It's not a bad performance, but it's not what I imagined based on what I heard. In the second half, however, when I found the adult cast weak, Curry's performance caught fire with me. He, John Ritter, and a handful of flashbacks to the kids kept me involved in the story when despairing and moving on to The Devil Wears Prada would have been easy.
IT exists at an interesting point in the evolution of Stephen King-movies. By 1990, Rob Reiner's Stand by Me had shown it was possible to be faithful to King's material and turn a profit. Early King adaptations tend to take the basic plot beats then change the characters and their motivations to suit the writer & director. Tommy Lee Wallace, working without the big studio advantages afforded Reiner, does a credible, faithful adaptation, which must be part of this movie's enduring popularity. IT excises massive chunks of the book, but hits every significant plot point, making it feel remarkably faithful then and now. The screenplay makes Richie more obnoxious, Eddie hostage to his Mom even as an adult, but the changes don't change the central ideas of the original story.
I've heard about the 1990 version, generally called the "Tim Curry version," since it aired 31 years ago. I remember being disinterested in it at the time. Only in recent years has its continued love, being reissued on dvd as a double-sided feature, made me more curious, as have the comparisons between the new version and the '90. I finished IT today not at all sorry to have finally seen it. Will I watch it again? I mean, I guess I would if a group of people wanted to screen it for nostalgia, but otherwise, probably not, no. It's not that kind of thing. It's reasonably fun, the stuff with the kids works great, and it stays true to King. I'm pleased to add it to my collection, which is a solid rave for King adaptations. A satisfying, long lasting Twinkie.
John Ritter's performance is the only thing that has ever stayed with me. While I watched Three's Company incidentally, merely being in the room when it was on and not really watching, I never really saw Ritter until IT. I followed his career after hungrily and was floored by his performance in Sling Blade. People often cry at Robin William's loss, but he gave us an amazing body of work before he left us. We were downright fucking robbed when Ritter unexpectedly died.
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