Review of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) by Dbpirate1129 — 25 Nov 2016

Fantastic Beasts is an absolute blast and a great opener to this new story in the Wizarding World. It has all the magic of the Harry Potter franchise, while at the same time bringing in new elements and standing on its own without relying too much on nostalgia or the previous entries. I don't want to spoil too much but this film was much darker than I was expecting. This is definitely a more mature version of J.K. Rowling's universe. The acting is fantastic. Eddie Redmayne as Newt was a great choice but I would say the standout is probably Colin Farrell as Percival Graves. He stole every scene he was in. Fantastic Beasts is full to the brim with imagination. It truly shows how many tricks Rowling still has up her sleeve. It's pretty impressive how her first screenplay/film is already up to par with her extremely innovative book series. This is definitely not like other prequels when it comes to substance. It's original, it's complex, and it's engaging. And I say that as someone who liked the Star Wars prequels.

Unfortunately, since I'm not an official critic, I can only give scores out of 10 but if I could give scores out of 100, this would be a 96. For Harry Potter fans, this probably ranks somewhere in between 3rd and 4th place out of all the films. For me, that'd be between Prisoner of Azkaban and Half-Blood Prince.