It Chapter Two

Spoiler-free!

What's more likely to be a great movie -- one that ends with the characters making a promise to return and fight the evil again whenever it may return, or one in which all they do is make good on that promise?

Directed, once again, by Andy Muschietti.

Given that Chapter Two and Chapter One come from the same singular book, Chapter Two has no real right to feel so much like a sequel. Ideally it should have a "Part 2" flavor. If the filmmakers knew how successful Chapter One would be, I bet they would have filmed both parts at once. Then the de-aging of the child actors wouldn't have been necessary, and the story could have been developed to flow better between the two films. As it is, the two parts feel out of sync with each other. One being bigger in size, and the other more compact yet weighty with substance.

Much like what happened with Season 2 of Stranger Things, this sequel is painfully aware of the wild success of its predecessor. You can see it in the kids' performances, who are much less organic here. Like they're putting on a show for an audience instead of digging into honesty and stretching their acting chops. And while the adults don't come across that way at all, their script does it for them on occasion, with throwaway callback lines. Such as when they go in the well house and Bev dryly proclaims, "Beep beep, Richie." Another thing the adults have going for them; they're way better at delivering comedy.

As a result, the adult's version feels lighter in tone.

Laughs came freely; as for scares, it hit Not Scary At All for me. They tried to match scary-levels with Chapter One, but the method degraded slightly; there are a lot -- and I mean a lot of jump-scare moments. And every single one of them follows the exact same pattern. 1. Thing might be scary. 2. Thing is maybe not so scary after all. 3. Pause pause pause... 4. THING IS SCARY! Inevitably, the thing morphs into CGI, half the time with aspects of Pennywise's face pasted on it. I actually prefer when horror film don't scare me, but it does bother me that so much time was spent of these ultimately useless moments.

From my perspective "scary" is a lot less important than simply "effective." And the only times these moments were effective is when it led to an actual kill. Those are the ones that take their time to craft the creepiness and the dread. The most effective part of the movie was waiting for a jump scare while the camera lingered on Bill Skarsgård, motionless, drooling, his one eye pointing out to the side. No CGI, just an effective performance, given time to breathe and settle before it bursts. Other horror elements were more varying degrees of cool, or neat, or messed-up, which works fine for me. Overcrowding and rushing were the problems there.

But casting was a resounding win!

I think it's universally acknowledged that the casting here is pitch perfect. Even the well-known actors, Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, and Bill Hader are fantastically spot-on. Isaiah Mustafa, Jay Ryan, James Ransone, and Andy Bean were clearly cast more for their accurate appearances, but also deliver wonderfully on the performance side. Hader steals almost too many scenes, and my favorite was Ransone as Eddie. The best scene in the whole movie was their meeting up and having dinner. Their reactions to seeing each other again and how the nail the same feel and dynamic their kid counterparts did.

A better version of this film is out in the cosmos somewhere. I don't know how it works, but it likely required at least some changes to the first movie. It's a hefty story to swing in just two movies, so one great film and one slightly less-so isn't a disappointing result, especially if you consider less pleasant alternatives. This two-part series avoided disaster by breaking up repetitive material with elevating moments from a brilliant cast, and regular interludes of real, fascinating, quality content. My only real regret is that Chapter One ended in a more satisfying and thematically potent way.

No more floating, but I sure do hope Bill Skarsgård gets all the roles he could wish for after this!

The best ending of a series ideally belongs at the very end. But I loved Chapter One as is, so if that movie's greatness required this one to fall slightly short, I'll take it and be happy. Since this continuation isn't necessary to get a complete and satisfying story, there's no harm done either way. It Chapter Two is like the cherry on top of a giant sundae, or a red balloon in the hand of a clown; it doesn't add much in terms of substance, but it sure does complete the picture nicely.

Shazam!

Spoiler-free!

The DCEU is slowly finding its feet. When Aquaman came out I was hoping they'd grow away from trying to copy the dead-though-profitable Marvel formula, and now Shazam! -- a movie with an exclamation point in its title about a foster kid who is endowed with the power of the gods by a wizard in order to defeat the seven deadly sins incarnate -- is their most on-brand and unique offering yet.

Keep going DCEU! Embrace your qualities! The ridiculousness and the darkness alike! Be yourself!

Unfortunately, unique doesn't necessitate good, and this flick has its share of missteps. But here's the difference between the MCU and the DCEU these days: MCU films are an even flat line of quality; middling, but steady across the board. DCEU films have ups and downs of quality so that it's maybe lower on average than the MCU line, but because of the fluctuation it hits highs from time to time that give it life. Much like a heartbeat. And Shazam! is a perfect example of this heart monitor effect. On the low side there's things like overcooked jokes and boring fight scenes that at best add nothing to the film and at worst take time away from the upper side, where Billy Batson (Asher Angel) is a superhero looking for a family and a purpose and Don't Stop Me Now plays in training montages.

At the top of the highs always seem to be Billy and his foster brother Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer) and even their other foster siblings too. Billy is reluctant to settle down with them for understandable reasons and I thought it was very cute how uncomfortable the family feels at first and yet settles into a warm place without changing any of the characters. Like the mom and dad's cheesiness. They become endearing naturally. Zachary Levi's super-sized version of Billy is complicated. I liked what he was doing -- he has great comic delivery, was goofy and charming, and then compelling when he needed to be -- but he didn't always match Billy's character in the way Asher portrays him. The kid version acts more maturely than the adult, and the inconsistency bothered me.

If only Asher had more goofy scenes and Zac had more serious scenes. Just to match them more closely.

I also enjoyed Mark Strong's villain for the most part. They took time to develop him into an evil place, but once they got him there, they let him fall through the cracks. Still he is Mark Strong; so he's consistently cool. His horde of demon-eyed monsters does body-slam the film's tone into surprising darkness a few times -- but I didn't mind the tonal shifts in themselves; the problem was that the shifting was clunky and jarring, not that darkness was inappropriate in the story. A good balance of seriousness and goofiness can be very effective, but this movie doesn't balance them so much as it's continually trading one for the other. Whenever it brings both sides together it works much better and fulfills its purpose of bringing stakes to the plot.

I guess this movie has a balancing problem overall. It has good comedy and it has great drama, but it doesn't know how to make it meld or when to stop pushing. The first act was conducive to the comedy and that's where the best stuff is. Then the third act naturally needs more of the drama, and again, it delivers. But the second act is a mess in trying to transition the plot into the big showdown, while also spending every possible second in Big-style "superhero" stuff, where Billy is just Zac in nerdy goof-off mode. This might've been fixed by having Billy and Mark Strong meet sooner, but it's hard to tell. There was an awful lot of wasting time going that I would've loved to see used for more streamlined character-furthering purposes.

Did I say that Jack Grazer was a highlight? Because he was. Also, Adam Brody shows up for a little while and I enjoyed that very much.

The fight sequences were mostly DCEU-patented punching and slamming and flying around without much repercussion. But emphasis on mostly. In the end they always seem to come around to a compelling or smart conclusion, so all the CGI punching is just more empty entertainment padding. I get why there's so much of it, but I liked the characters, story, and important moments so much that I kept wishing for more of that, even if it meant shorter battle sequences. Never been much for those anyway. But I'd much rather wait out a quick fight scene or two than have the whole movie be a cold product, and since Shazam! delivers on the heart consistently throughout, I was never left wanting for long.

It's kind of a mess, throwing everything and the kitchen sink into a bottle and flossing to shake. A lot of it doesn't mix and it often gets distracted by how much fun it's having. It is fun though; charming, sweet, funny, freaky as all get out, mythical and magical yet grounded, and populated with lovable characters. It has all the pieces, and just doesn't know exactly how to assemble them in the most efficient and effective way. But it never forgets about the heart -- and that's what makes it super. SHAZAM!