As the man who gave a positive review of “The Book of Henry” on this very website I have to disagree with the idea that we don’t try to find the positive. Hell, I even wrote a whole editorial about it (http://www.uclfilmsociety.co.uk/blog/open-letter-cynics/).

And whilst I haven’t seen “It” yet, I’m sincerely hoping and expecting that I will disagree with Milo when I do. I do however, have to refute the claim that this review isn’t coherently written, it argues a fair point.

Keep up the debate!

Loser archetype #3 (probably the geeky ginger one)

Hey Jerry, glad you got in touch.

On your first point, I apologize for any incoherence you might have encountered reading this review, and will be glad to make plainer any areas you had difficulty with if you’d care to point them out to me.

On your next, I can assure you that I did have the misfortune of enduring the film.

And on the review being negative, I confess, it is. But that’s because the film is bad. If you’d care to peruse my other reviews you’d notice that the vast majority are positive. But I must admit that by adopting a ‘hipster-mentality’, i.e. giving a bad film a bad notice, I am veering dangerously close to emulating Christopher Nolan, whose broad and mainstream appeal really defines what it means to be a hipster.

Onto your further comments:

– Documentaries are films, and a good many are a lot more fun than this one.

– I didn’t reduce him to that, the film did. I only have a cursory knowledge of the novel, but know that much of his plot didn’t make it into the film, with some of his roles in the story being transposed to other characters. In the film he spends much of his time offscreen, with some of the key themes from the original story being reduced to incredibly vague references, such as the racial theme that defines his background. Giving him the skeleton of an arc, with appropriate beats, doesn’t equate to fleshing out the character and the story, something missing from the script.

– Oh, sure, there are child-like actions thrown in the mix, don’t get me wrong, but the dialogue and delivery for the children is not at all how kids speak or interact. Hollywood inundates us with this image, but watch something like Tomboy (2011) and the difference will strike you. I’m not saying that this film should try and be totally realistic, just pointing out a trend.

– Here I disagree – this film is not trying to communicate the fear of the children and hoping its audience will be frightened at the same time, but the other way around. Consider when Georgie is first chasing the boat, and he runs into an obstacle – the loud audio cue and sudden cut are here designed to scare the audience by exploiting the tension of the scene. There’s nothing about running into a plank of wood that is attempting to communicate the psychology of terrified children. And I didn’t imply that I’m not scared of anything. Just not this, though I will say there is obviously a good level of subjectivity in what frightens someone. But despite that, it was still sloppy.

– Absolutely serious, I even mentioned the irony in saying that, and explained why. Gloss and production value are not the key to effective design, though I will reiterate that Curry’s version was far from great itself.

– Re-read that part of the review – when describing Ben and Richie I added ‘wait, switch those descriptions to change it up a little’, implying that in this film the fat guy is the smart one and glasses is funny. Glad to clear that up. And as for the germaphobe trope, it’s definitely a thing: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TerrifiedOfGerms. Your last point here is true, but I wonder why you said it.

– It is unsurprising that much of the plot in the film adaptation of It originate in the novel. That in no way defends the film – I haven’t read the book, but if this film is anything to go by, I don’t think I’d be much a fan. I’m not too sure what made up reasons you’re referring to at the end of this paragraph.

And regarding the snarky wrap-up, almost every film ever made has required tons of people to work hard, but that has no inherent bearing on the quality of the finished product. And I did look for the positives, they were just mostly missing, or obscured by the more pressing issues the film had. And is it a common theme with the UCL Film & Television Society reviews? Most are very positive, including my own as mentioned above, but if you want to substantiate that it would make me feel kinda warm so please do.

Thanks for getting in touch, hope to hear back soon!

Losers’ Club HQ

Secondly, it feels like you have not even watched the film. You contradict yourself so many times and your points don’t actually match up to what happens in the film, did you just watch a youtube clip of the film?

This is so negative, I can’t help but wonder if this society cares about movies or just pretend to with the hope that one day their hipster-mentality will lead them one step closer to being like Christopher Nolan. Anyways, please find my comments to your review below:

– Please remember this is a film and not a documentary – have fun, stop crying.
– I honestly can’t believe you have reduced a character to just being the ‘black one’, when he has just as much, if not more of a character arch than any of the other kids (being the new kid in town and an outsider, his family being burnt in his home, having to kill animals for a living, not having any friends, etc.)
– I don’t know if you think this is how adult behave (spitting over cliffs, stealing plasters from pharmacies, riding bmx’s in the road, exploring the sewers, making paper boats, etc), but if you do, I am worried for you.
– Most importantly, a horror is not a horror film dependant on you finding it scary, Good for you if your not afraid of anything. The movie is about what kids are afraid of and shows horrific images that are traumatising for them and to most normal humans watching.
– Are you serious that this Pennywise looks WORSE than the Tim Curry version in the 90s? Really?
– Your description of the archetypes also don’t match any of the kids in the film. Ben wasn’t the fat funny one? The smart glasses one? Are you referring to Ritchie because that makes no sense, he was the funny one if any. Eddie was way more than just a germaphobe and since when has this been an 80s archetype? Please, just name me one film in the 80s where there is a character who is a germaphobe and nothing else. And there were two Jewish kids btw.
– I will agree with you on one thing, the story was a bit predictable but maybe thats because I read the book – you know that one you reference at the beginning? Pretty much all the plot point you complain about are from that book. Fair enough if you don’t like the story of IT but why make up reason to not like it that don’t really make any sense?

I’ll stop here because honestly I cannot even list half of the issues I had with your review. But mainly I just feel like it is such a negative approach. Tons of people work hard on a movie for you to just call it trash. You don’t even try to find the positive and when you do it is all negative. This is such a common theme with all UCLU Film Society reviews – good luck with getting into the industry. You guys are the real Losers Club.