It

The current IT is indeed one of the best filmed Stephen King adaptations. Faint praise? I cite THE SHINING, THE DEAD ZONE, STAND BY ME, MISERY, CARRIE, SALEM'S LOT, and a handful of others in that small class.  All classics to some degree.  The novel It was one of King's epic horrors that was more about how folks band together than perhaps the very thing that terrorized them.  But yes, the terror does often define them as well.  This would certainly be the case with this story of a group of adolescents in small town Maine who are scared shitless by a malevolent clown who hangs out in sewers and wells and scary old houses, waiting to lure children to a gruesome death.

I only saw bits and pieces of the miniseries that aired in the early '90s, so I can't comment on that.  I've heard that Tim Curry was quite animated as the clown. 

IT opens with a young boy tragically reaching out for his toy in a storm drain.  The evil known as Pennywise is there, and he seems to know a lot about Georgie, and his older brother Bill, who gave him the paper sailboat.  The clown mauls and abducts Georgie, who joins the many who mysteriously vanish in the town of Derry.  We'll learn later that over the past few hundred years, cycles of missing children plagued the town.  What is Pennywise anyway? Is he, er, it real? An embodiment of their fears?  Of everyone's?

The time period from the novel has been switched from the late 1950s to the late 1980s. This allows for some nifty period jokes and references for us Gen Xers.  Here is a rundown of most of our heroes, the "Losers' Club":

Bill (Jason Lieberher), who stutters, is the leader of a group of social outcasts who are chased by town bullies and trade the usual boy insults.  Richie (Finn Wolfhard) is the funniest, a smart and foul mouthed brat with huge glasses that overwhelm his face. Stan (Wyatt Oleff) is the son of a rabbi who is having difficulty focusing on his upcoming bar mitzvah due to his lack of interest.  Eddie (Jack Dylan Grazer) is the hypochondriac and germaphobe of the group.  He has a smothering mother who is clearly the source of such misery.  Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor) is the new kid who is painfully shy and overweight, an easy target for the bullies who call him "tits".  Mike (Chosen Jacobs) is the African American, homeschooled kid, a sensitive soul.  Bev (Sophia Lillis) is the one girl, who suffers an unfair reputation at school for promiscuity and very real sexual abuse from her father.

As many have stated, IT is like THE GOONIES in many ways, and the comparison is favorable and accurate.  Siimilarities to STAND BY ME are also inevitable.   IT plays best as an ode to friendship, to beating the odds, to never quitting, even when things are really, really bad.  To growing up.  Old hat cornball stuff, but it works.  The movie is well cast; the kids are endearing and most of the adults are portrayed effectively as either evil or worthless or both.  This is a kid's story after all.  And King really captured how a kid's story would be told, with outrageously heightened imagery.

The screenplay of IT (one of its writers is original director Cary Fukunaga) makes changes and omissions from the novel that in my opinion do not detract.  Director Andy Muschietti delivers the shock scenes with panache and serious intensity, although sometimes his film feels like a clumsy volley between the frightening and the heartwarming. Bill Skarsgard plays Pennywise with a terrifying ferocity, always out in the open, ready to scare the you know what out of everyone. We may see a bit too much of him, but he does in fact own every moment, CGI or not.  Skarsgard seems to have a good handle on how this particular brand of evil would act as a clown manifestation.

Overall, this movie delivers the goods, and is finally just good old fashioned scary fun.  The end credits inform us that we just watched Chapter One.  You do know this story picks up years later, when the kids are adults, right? We'll see if the producers milk this franchise for more than one sequel.  Or a miniseries...