Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Review

The Harry Potter universe was one that totally consumed pop culture for the kids of the late 90’s and early 2000’s, including myself.  What Friends (1994-2004) was to people from the previous or in some cases same generation, Harry Potter was to me.  It was all-consuming with seven books, eight movies, plenty of merchandise in-between, and plenty, plenty, of fan-fiction and follow-up material, both from official sources and non-official sources.  The same way C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien did before, J.K. Rowling hit a nerve with people with her stories, characters, and most of all the world she created.  So now nine years after she completed her books and five years after the final movie was released, we have Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.  To put it simply, it doesn’t hold a candle to the original film or original book, and it’s really a film that doesn’t get me very excited for four more films.  Well, that’s the idea Warner Bros. and company have in mind, but we’ll see what happens going forward.

So the basic story follows Newt Scamander as he travels from England to New York City in the 1920’s with several magical creatures which he is studying and caring for.  However, due to a few mix-ups, a muggle, or no-maj as the Americans call them, ends up with Newt’s suitcase where the creatures stay, and sets several of them free.  So it’s up to Newt, the no-maj Jacob, auror Tina, and Tina’s sister Queenie to track down the beasts.  Then there’s this subplot with a creature known as an Obscurus, which basically goes around destroying parts of the city for, um, reasons.  Anyways, this also involves Percival Graves, another auror who tries to catch this, but it might just be another item on Newt’s growing list of correction to make.

So basically, some of the same strengths technically that the Harry Potter films exists here: a wonderfully inventive world, great production design, costume design, and music.  David Yates, who helmed the last four Potter films returns as director here, so he’s a trusted hand by now with directing these films.  Also the character of Jacob, the no-maj, is the only major character that I’m walking away from this film really remembering.

So basically my big problem with the film is this: I can’t latch onto these characters like I did with the plethora of characters that J.K. Rowling had in her main Harry Potter universe.  With the exception of Jacob, the other characters are just there, and we really don’t get too much backstory of personal moments that make remember them.  This is the same problem a few other prequel film series had: both the Star Wars prequel trilogy and The Hobbit trilogy lacked the strong characters the originals had, and now the same has come true for Fantastic Beasts.  In particular the main character, Newt, felt like a throwaway character.  And Eddie Redmayne looks the role, but it felt like he just showed up on set to be there and didn’t bring anything, whereas almost every actor in the regular Harry Potter series came to play. Maybe one of the added benefits of the original Harry Potter films was being able to read the books, and arguably you always get more out of the characters from the books than the movies, but still, how many original movie characters that never appeared before their initial movie that have stuck with us for years?  Plus one of the most irritating scenes of the year involves one of the beast capturings, the one in Central Park, if you’re asking which one.  I just hated the scene.  Plus the pace of the film was all over the place.  The first hour or so flew by, but after that I felt like I was stuck in the theater for about another two or three hours instead of an hour and change.  And for me personally, the visual effects in the film were subpar.  Some creatures and effects were fine, but other ones looked like they ran out of time and had to just throw something together.

So yeah, with such a short list of positives and a long list of negatives, you’d think I hated this movie, but it’s actually not that bad.  The technical elements really do outweigh quite a few of the problems.  While this new film doesn’t get me pumped for four sequels, I’m interested to see if maybe the second or third film will bring me in. Still, it’s a stable foundation to build this spin-off franchise on, but it could have been, and especially with J.K Rowling writing the screenplay, should have been a lot better.

My rating: 6/10.

PlagmanRules

I am a gigantic movie nerd who spends his free time memorizing Oscar winners and nominees and seeing as many good movies as I can. I have always wanted to write about films, review films, and speculate on films, and hope that this site helps me get a couple of people who can agree or disagree with me.