Rated Greg’s Top 5 Young Crews
- Michael, Randy, Namond, and Dukie – The Wire
- Gordie, Chris, Teddy, and Vern – Stand by Me
- The Losers Club – It (2017)
- The Sandlot kids
- The Mighty Ducks
The 1990 ABC mini-series IT, based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name, gave me nightmares for YEARS growing up. A sadistic killer clown invisible to adults, who lives in a suburban sewer and terrorizes children? Are you fucking kidding me? I can’t think of a scarier scenario for a 10 year old Rated Greg to encounter….well….other than the nerve-wracking proposal of calling a girl on the phone.
But within a few years you grow up and characters like Pennywise seem much less real to you. The whole thing is just too silly, which is actually the very idea behind King’s book. IT is a metaphor for the death of a child’s imagination during one’s tween years. With the widely anticipated remake coming up I went back and looked at a few scenes from the original (like above). Unsurprisingly, the horror classic just wasn’t as scary as a remembered it.
There are really only two questions that need answering in regards to 2017’s IT remake. Is IT scary? And is IT good? Lets tackle the former first. IT is scary but it’s not THAT scary. A couple jump scenes here and there, a couple creepy shots, definitely less cheesy than the dated original, but all in all there’s a lot more fun in the film than the unnerving trailer would lead you to believe. This certainly isn’t The Conjuring series, the current master class in eliciting scares.
Glad we got that out of the way. Well is IT good? No……IT is goddamn GREAT! I’ll admit that with consensus rave reviews by critics coming in and a cosign by the general public to the tune of the best September opening of all time ($123 million domestic box office, a ridiculous feat for a hard R rated movie), I was ready to be a little let down. Many times the most hyped movies are too good to be true, but IT’s not. Scare tactics aside for the most timid, IT is flat out funny. On the surface, the adolescent suburban bike gang film may remind viewers of The Goonies or the vastly overrated Stranger Things (you heard me), but the plethora of humor in it actually reminded me of Superbad more than anything else. #You’llFloatToo but you’ll laugh along the way. Grade: A-
Rated Greg 