Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Review

I can imagine that J.K. Rowling, in 2011 after the premier of the last Harry Potter film, looked at all the money she had made and said "yeah, I'd like to make more," which is exactly how this film ends up feeling. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is the name of this first Harry Potter spin-off, and it achieves something only the first two film's could: whimsy. The plot, in where Newt Scamander, played by Eddie Redmayne, arrives in New York with a suitcase packed with fantastical creatures, and inadvertently unleashes them in the Big Apple. He and his friends set off to recapture them, and this sort of "monster-of-the-week" story helps imbue the 133 minute long film with more fancifulness than all of director David Yates' previous Harry Potter films combined.

Every creature, there are only a handful to collect, range wildly in size, shape, and visibility, and these computer-generated monsters are charming with a certain "bull in a china shop" behavior. This alone should have been the movie; having a group of heroes try and acquire all of this lost creatures without being noticed by non-magic folks, in the film called "No-Maj." But there is a needless story about evil "Obscurial" reeking havoc on the city, an ill-defined threat that drags the film's early scenes of energetic fun into a tired exercise of bleak politics and a most exhausted "good vs evil" plot device.

Newt's friends include Tina Goldstein, played by Katherine Waterston, a frisky and often ignored witch, Jacob Kowalski, played by Dan Fogler, a portly muggle- oh sorry, "muggle" is synonym for the aforesaid "no-maj." Hey, these movies do not make money based on consistency. There is also Queenie, played by Alison Sudol, the younger sister of Tina who falls for our corpulent human. Their lack of initial chemistry becomes their chemistry by the time the curtains close, who have a welcome awkwardness to all their hand holding and flirting. Rounding out the supporting cast are Credence Barebone, played by Erza Miller who gives an uncomfortable performance that treads the line of good guy and bad guy, and Collin Farrell, who plays Percival Graves and is in charge of capturing our hero Newt due to the Magical Congress of the USA, or MACUSA for short, believing that he is responsible for the mysterious "Obscurial" that has been troubling the normal people of NYC.

But that leaves us the audience with two options for Graves, as we know Newt is not accountable for this "Obscurial:" either Graves is wrong, or he is a bad guy. There is no other option for him, and by the time the film's twist rolls around, the audience groans having already knew it several scenes ago. Plus, his name sounds like it should have "Darth" before it- but I digress.

The actual nuances of the plot are simple only on the surface, and threads of complexity instantly turns into bogged confusion, and to attempt a summary using my "no-maj/muggle" fingers would do no justice to its fans, so I won't. But there is something here that still makes no sense; a wand is what grants wizards and witches their power, but in several scenes here a simple twitch of the hand can summon magic. How!? There have been nine films and they still do not explain this? Maybe they did and I just fell asleep- if that is the case, I bet it was during Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Fabulous character Jon Voight makes what feels like a cameo, playing the father of a US senator who is killed by the film's main villain, that aforementioned underwhelming cocktail of murkiness and CGI. He carries his scenes with a sense of importance even when his only part in the film is bulking filler. But there is a scene at the end, where the final big action set piece takes place and all the nearby "no-maj" crowd and stare in confusion and distraught. The wizards, once the dust settles and the post credits are nearing, decide to use a most convenient potion which wipes clean the memories of all the human spectators. That got me wondering, does that mean Jon Voight's character will just forget his son's death just like all the magical explosions he just witnessed? I am sorry, but that is terrible and inexcusable- even if it is just a fake-movie-father and a fake-movie-son. I hope at least they attended the fake-movie-funeral.