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Currently traumatizing myself by also casting the movie in my head and let me tell you, Toni Collete, that you will not be snubbed again come Oscar season.
(Full review eventually. Maybe not. It's really good and I'm on page 68. Read it.)
Feb 24, 2025
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Jun 11, 2025
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Don't re-read the book first! Take the movie for what it is!
It's been 10 years or so since I read Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. I remember really enjoying the book, but I spent the whole movie being like "wait, did this happen? is this new? why don't I remember this? wouldn't it have impacted me enough to remember reading it?". I really thought they must have changed a lot about the story, but eventually I forgot about comparing it to the book and just enjoyed the movie, and it was so good. It was really nice to not get hung up on the details I'd long forgotten anyway.
After looking it up online, I see some things were changed (and I do consider one of these changes to be a pretty substantial one, and it was upsetting to watch but I think it gave depth to one of the main characters and how his experience with accepting himself was different from the other's) but it was apparently a mostly faithful* adaptation. So I guess I just got to experience this beautiful story for the first time all over again! How many times do we find ourselves wishing we could do that?
Anyway some of the smaller supporting actors aren't the greatest but beyond that it's SUCH a good movie. I'd recommend getting your hands on the DVD (I checked it out from my library--that's a separate rec) because it has such a sweet, tender, and beautifully cinematic DELETED scene that I'm honestly hurt that they cut from the main movie. Also, I'm going to see if my library has the book available because I need to refresh myself on that clearly lol
*Okay someone on reddit thinks that the way Ari was impacted by Dante and then fell in love with Dante as a byproduct of that was "lost" in the movie compared to the book? But I definitely disagree, because I picked up on that tonight for sure. And there are some other really minor complaints regarding characterization and even the set dressing? "The big mirror in his room doesn't make sense" bestie it's on screen for 2 seconds and no one ever mentions it, it's not important! You're dinging the movie for that? So despite this person who says "85% of the movie is bad," I think if you read and loved the book as a teenager, you should definitely watch the movie as soon as you can. <3
4d ago
“Oh, that book.” Yes.
I feel like It is thought of more often as a concept of a book/story or dismissed with a “Yeah, yeah” rather than considered an actual thing you can sit down and read. Not that it is generally despised (other than *that* scene, and yes, I completely agree), but I feel as if so few people care enough to try reading it. And with its massively popular adaptation into the 2017/2019 films, the way It as a story is viewed by the public has completely changed, and today’s tweens probably don’t even know who the director of the films is, let alone Stephen King.
Last summer, I read this book. I started it at the beach at home, but on that fateful day, the waves crashed onto my family’s belongings, taking with them a lunchbox of fruits and one flip-flop of mine (RIP). The next day, we left for a five-day trip, so I was stuck with a very old, very waterlogged, engorged, warped copy of the book. On the very long car rides over the next days, I knocked out over half of It, and spent scorching days by the pool doing the same. On the way home, I began to wrap it up.
When I got back, a hardcover was waiting in the mail for me. And with the last moments of my carefree summer days, I sat in the sunset with my brand new copy of an old story, living vicariously through 7 kids experiencing their last summer together. The red light of the fading yet radiant sunset shone onto my face, and the darkness settled in as I turned the last page.
I have never felt so many things at once. With me, I carried a palpable yet arguably unfounded sense of nostalgia endlessly afterward, and I felt as if I had lived through multiple childhoods and adulthoods in just one summer. I felt devastated and content, hopeless and happy. There is no one emotion I could tie to experiencing 1153 pages of It. It’s just It. It amazes me that on my shelf is an entire world, embossed with the proud “FROM THE LIBRARY OF,” expectant, waiting to be reopened, re-experienced, relived.
This summer will forever be engrained in my memory, and although I say this as a young person, the summer I spent in Sequoia Tree Park amidst gargantuan trees and rolling mountainscapes is the summer I grew up with seven Losers, just trying to get by and go forth with their lives.
Jan 28, 2025
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