He thrusts his fists against the posts

The old fortune teller lies dead on the floor

Nobody needs fortunes told anymore

The trainer of insects is crouched on his knees

And frantically looking for runaway fleas

Let's all drink to the death of a clown

~~ “Death of a Clown” by The Kinks

Peek-a-boo!

I know that there is plenty of serious shit happening today so please don’t take this post as ignoring that stuff. I’m not ignoring anything and have had a quiet day of listening to news and reflecting on things. I’m watching for friends and family in Florida to post that they are okay and so far, so good. Others have written quite eloquently about the serious things, more than I ever could, so I’ll go with writing about some pop culture news.

We all cope in our own way and I’m not one to question the validity of anyone’s coping skills. Whatever works for you, as long as you don’t harm yourself or others, is okay with me! One of my ways of coping is to immerse myself in something else, something that brings me joy. It’s often music (and I’m listening to some Kinks as I type), it’s often books, and sometimes it’s favorite shows or movies.

After a fun weekend in Chicago (although we witnessed an absolutely brutal Cubs loss to the Brewers), which included a couple of visits to an actual speakeasy (too cool for school!), we headed back early so that we could catch a late afternoon viewing of the movie “IT.”

I had been hearing good buzz about it and every friend who saw it said they really enjoyed it. Any Stephen King fan knows how hit-and-miss the productions of his novels can be. Some hit it out of the park (“The Shawshank Redemption,” “Stand By Me,” “Misery,” “The Shining,” although SK himself wasn’t a Number One Fan of the latter). Some are cult favorites and we love them even though they’re not the greatest of productions (“Pet Sematary,” the TV miniseries of “It” and “The Stand”). Some are just not very good, and “Maximum Overdrive” is the poster child for that category.

I’m always cheering for a movie or TV show based on one of his productions to be good. I’m not an unbiased critic because I really love seeing a beloved book come to life and I usually find something to enjoy in it, even if it’s mostly kind of bad. Based on the early buzz, I had high hopes for this current ITeration. (Get it? Get it??)

I was delighted to find out that not only was it not BAD, it was genuinely GOOD! Like crazy, fun, scary, exciting good! It adheres to the book fairly faithfully but with a few differences that don’t take away from the enjoyment if you’ve read the book. Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise is a creepy, drooly, fangy mess and while I think Tim Curry will always be the quintessential Pennywise, Skarsgård makes him considerably more menacing compared to Curry’s somewhat campy clown.

The true star of the movie is the kids, though. The Losers Club. I loved every single one of them, from motormouth hypochondriac (by his mother’s proxy) Eddie to the comic relief Richie to the lovely, mighty Beverly. They were the embodiment of every single one of us who has been bullied or put down or abused and who finally said “Enough!” and fought back. Enough abuse, enough humiliation, enough fear. The kids had the courage to make their stand and I loved them all for it. The actors who played the kids were so good that you cheered for them almost immediately and wanted them to not just be okay, but to thrive and be safe and free from harm, whether it was from the town bullies or the murderous clown.

I’m a lifelong horror movie fan so it takes plenty to genuinely scare me. This movie did not genuinely scare me although there were plenty of oogy parts (to borrow one of Annie Wilkes’s words). There were the usual startling moments but the ones that made me go “Ewww” the most were the pharmacist Mr. Keene going all creeper on the pubescent Beverly and even worse, her own father doing the creeping. There are many dangers in this world for kids and killer clowns are but one of them.

They balanced the creepiness with strategically placed comic relief, usually in the form of Richie and his voices and jokes, but occasionally in Eddie. I won’t give away the joke but one moment that made me laugh out loud was when he confronted his horrid mother about the pills that he’d been taking for years, after finding out from one of the girls at the pharmacy that they were placebos and always had been. It is a rare thing to be able to balance what is really a pretty serious moment with a tiny little line that can make you laugh.

So major props to everyone involved in the movie, because twenty-four hours later, I’m still smiling about it. Not because it’s a feel-good movie, although for a movie about a murderous clown, it made me feel surprisingly good! It’s just a great adaptation and it will be a true pleasure to revisit our Losers Club in a year or so when we find out what they’ve been up to and how they have fared as adults.

And for those parents who brought young kids to this movie? What in the holy hell were you thinking? I’m not going to totally judge you because I realize that some kids can handle horror and separate fantasy from reality better than others. I was one of those kids and I grew up to be totally normal.

Wait. What? Why is everyone laughing? Stop it!

All kidding aside, this really is not a movie for young kids. I was seeing a few that were maybe 8-years-old, if that. There are some truly disturbing images in this movie, ones that made even jaded horror aficionados like me and my sister Diana look at each other and go, “Gahhhh!”

So really, don’t take kids to this movie. But everyone else should go see it because it is a total blast! From what I’m reading, it’s a genuine hit, and our theater at 4 PM on a Sunday was pretty full. Big box office on opening weekend! You might even say it…

KILLED.

Bahaha! Beep beep, Richie!