Posted in: Movies, Review | Tagged: film, harry potter, Review, warner bros. j.k. rowling

Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them: Imperfect, But Still Magical

TL;DR Version: It's pretty good, not great, but still worth paying full price for: 4 Stars out of 5.

It's been more than five years since we last got to spend time in J.K. Rowling's wizarding world on the big screen, and this adventure of magizoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) throws the audience right back into the thick of it. This film isn't a prequel to the earlier films per-se, beyond the fact that it's set in Prohibition era New York, rather than current day England.

The background on the title and on Newt is that Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is the title of a required reading book for all first year students at Hogwarts by Harry Potter's time. It describes a range of magical creatures, their habits and habitats, and in general is a handy bestiary for any new student.

The film's story follows Newt as he arrives in New York with a suitcase full of a myriad array of creatures that he's collected and saved over the course of his travels around the world. It's a bit of a fish out of water story as Newt has never been to America before, and seems to be largely unaware of the local rules and regulations around the local wizard populace. This puts him into hot water almost immediately since the keeping of said creatures in the US is illegal. As the trailers have already alluded to, the suitcase is unwittingly opened and some of the creatures escape to wreak havoc around the city and to threaten exposing the wizarding populace to the no-mags (rather than the Old World term for the non-magical humans of muggle, the New World has gone with no-mags, for non-magical).

Newt's struggle to find and re-secure his beasts and ex-auror Porpentina Goldstein's (Katherine Waterston) vain efforts to keep him from causing any more problems are what takes up most of the film, while the main antagonist plot revolves around the struggle the American wizards are having with keeping their existence a secret from the rest of the population while at the same time trying to find out what happened to an evil wizard who had escaped from custody. Some no-mag's have begun to suspect that there are wizards in their midst and are campaigning to raise awareness of the evils of witchcraft and sorcery.

Aspiring baker and no-mag Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler) and Porpentina's telepathic sister Queenie (Alison Sudol) make for an adorable pairing and are fun to watch playing off of each other as they both race to see who can fall for the other faster.

The movie is enjoyable, but suffers in the same vein of so many that are meant to start off a new franchise. Whenever there's not action happening on the screen or displays of wizarding, it slows down to a bit of a crawl. The anti-witchcraft/pseudo-temperance society storyline is rather slowly paced, and has a far darker tone than the rest of the film. It has the distinct feel of two very different films being mashed together, with one being more kid friendly, with the other being more young-adult exploring more serious themes: wizards unhappy with having to hide their abilities, and a social segregation of the wizarding and non-wizarding populace.

Overall it's more the feel of a pilot episode of a Netflix series, where all of the characters and motivations need time to get, but during which not a lot of progress in story is getting made. However, since it's not a TV series, rather than being able to move on to the next episode, now there's only waiting a few years for the next installment.

The CGI is surprisingly weak in a few cases, notably around some of the magical creature's feathers, and there are a few gratuitous scenes which are staged for the visceral 3D crowd to get their extra $3 worth of viewing "stuff coming right at them" but scream as contrived in the 2D version. This version of 1926's New York does look amazing, and a side excursion to get information from a mob-run speakeasy boss named Gnarlack (none other than Hellboy's Ron Perlman) captures the period vibe spot on.

There are definitely some Easter eggs laying around in the dialogue with regards to names and places from the previous films, which will give fans plenty of material to come up with fan theories about character connections. One actor does make an appearance that does kind of take the audience out of the movie (they are one of those actors who is always themselves regardless of the character being played) towards the very end, but beyond that everyone does a good job in their respective roles, with Gnarlack and Queenie both being stand-outs.

In the end it is a good film, and intriguing on where they'll take this new franchise. At the moment most of that interest will be as the timeline catches up towards the era leading directly towards the rise of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, but then these new characters will also grow on fans in the same way that Rowling's other characters have. It is nice, however, to have a story that the audience hasn't already read so the adventure can grow into new directions.

BleedingCool's own Rich Johnston and Patrick Dane have both just gotten out of the theater after having watched the movie as well (in London no less, the lucky blokes). Check out the video below to hear their thoughts fresh as they emerge from the screening.

Cast:
Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander
Katherine Waterston as Porpentina Goldstein
Dan Fogler as Jacob Kowalski
Alison Sudol as Queenie Goldstein
Ezra Miller as Credence
Colin Farrell as Percival Graves
Ron Perlman as Gnarlack
Samantha Morton as Mary Lou
Jon Voight as Henry Shaw
Carmen Ejogo as Seraphina Picquery

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