Film Review: Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them

"This Is Mr. Scamander, He's Lost Something, I'm Going To Help Him..."

Being of an age in which the two main film franchises entwined with my youth was Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, the knowledge of an extended glance into the land of the former was an interesting premise, albeit a premise which included zero of the franchises' earlier cast members and a premise which undoubtedly was a huge risk after the success of the earlier movies. Stealing David Yates as director, the man responsible for the last few HP movies, and having J. K. Rowling herself as screenwriter, Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, inspired by the book of the same name by Rowling back in 2001, is a completely new view of the Potterverse, one which takes place in 1920's New York and follows the menacing tribulations of Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) who, much like the title says, loses a substantial amount of his fantastical beasts en route to Arizona and is then tasked with locating such creatures alongside the "no-maj" baker-to-be Jacob (Dan Fogler) and former Aura, Tina (Katherine Waterston). 

Being a solid fan of anything remotely Harry Potter, it comes as a deep disappointment that Fantastic Beasts for me was a resounding mess of a movie, a film which had very little engagement in terms of its characters alongside a strange sense of nonexistence in terms of any sort of narrative which made the film rather tedious at times, particularly during its' sloggish first hour and the movie's cop-out conclusion which seemed to have more endings than Return of the King. With the wasting of prestigious talent such as Jon Voight, Ezra Miller and Colin Farrell, the movie focuses most of its' attention on Redmayne in the movies' lead role, a performance which takes the fundamental kooky nature of Redmayne and ranks it up to eleven, resulting in a character which was actually rather boring to be with. Whilst the film does boast some creative digital effects and a cute loot-obsessed niffler, Fantastic Beasts can only be described as a mildly inconsequential addition to the lore of Harry Potter, a film which begins the cycle of FOUR more movies with a whimper rather than a bang, and a film which really nosedives with the most obvious twist since Inferno, in the addition of Johnny Depp as the real protagonist of the series. Shame really, as Colin Farrell was one of the film's positives. For every cloud I suppose...

Overall Score: 5/10