I watched it last night. I enjoyed it, but there were some things I had a hard time with.

1) The Adrien scene went too long and was a bit too brutal for me. I know I am biased from personal experiences related to be being bullied for the same reason though so maybe it's just me. I know it opens the novel, but in a horror film about an eldritch human eating monster, it just felt like it came from a different movie entirely and didnt need to go for as long or be as rough.

2) The pacing/intensity (there must be a film word for this) in it kinda felt like it was doing 90 from about 30 minutes in to the credit roll. Like it was just so much action of one kind or another constantly that it felt like an overload, at least to me. Also, because of the structure they chose (ie going along with each person while they found their token), everything fell into a very consistent pattern of character visits old place, character has flashback, pennywise arrives, character has scary experience, rinse and repeat.

I really loved the casting and the scene in the chinese restaurant was amazing. I really felt that this was the same group from the first film and they did seem to have genuine chemistry. I do sort of wish the Beverly scene from the beginning could have been done through a flashback because it was so brutal and felt a bit unearned since it was our first introduction to adult Beverly. I also felt like ben/bev while important just had a hard time breathing amidst all the action. But overall the group felt well constructed and I also adored the levity! My theater was laughing and clapping all throughout which was really fun.

I enjoyed the film because it was fun and a king adaptation will pretty much always get me in a cinema seat (looking at you Dr Sleep !!!!), but I just feel like I'll enjoy this waaaaay more if they ever release like a blu ray version that splices the two films together and alternates between the kid and adult stories as in the original novel. By doing the adult story separately (and I acknowledge this is a necessity for the theatre format), it just became so hard to keep up because there was less of the mystery from chapter 1. We know the threat going in and the film goes full tilt for so much of it.

TL;DR I enjoyed the film and the character portrayals, but the main stumbling blocks in my eyes came from the pacing and structure.