Review of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) by Chris O — 01 Jul 2018

While it's a fun, charming story set in a world we know and love, it leaves a to be desired.

This spin-off of the Harry Potter franchise jumps back in time to explore the wizarding world of 1926 New York, which is being threatened by both mystical acts of destruction and a group of extremist No-Majs (the American term for Muggles, i.e. those unable to use magic). Author Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) arrives in the city as part of a global study of fantastic beasts, but he gets caught up in this conflict when some of the magical creatures in his care are accidentally released.

Okay, so just before I left for college last summer, I marathoned the entire "Harry Potter" franchise. Going back and watching them, I remembered that they're really well made movies and some of them are genuinely amazing. But when you have a franchise that's so high grossing, what's stopping you from cashing in on that success and going for, well, cash? Nothing really. And despite this being written by J.K. Rowling, this more or less feels like that.

One thing messy about this film was the story. Was it a story about this author trying to track down and trace his magical creatures? Well honestly, no. There were so many conflicts and subplots going on at once that I think they lost their way. We had that story line, we witnessed the threats of Grindelwald, we had a romance between the two characters, we were trying to track down an obscurial, and more. It was just so messy and I wish the story just centralized on one adventure. It made us lose interest and attachment to the situation at hand.

I do enjoy the characters and the people that play them. It's certainly interesting to follow characters in the "Harry Potter" world who aren't a part of the original franchise, so that was nice. It was good that most the characters are likable and fun, which makes it easy to root for them. While I feel like I didn't learn a lot about them, they were still fun none the less.

Overall, I just felt really disappointed by this film. It's not necessarily a bad film and I don't want to label it as such, but it was underwhelming. I think the movie was fun to watch and it had its fun moments but it was kind of disappointing. It wasn't bad, so I'll still give it a positive rating, but I'm curious to see if they can step it up for the sequel.