Review of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018) by Valeli — 26 Nov 2018

As a fairly casual HP fan, I didn't like this. I spent the first 2/3 or so of the film more or less just confused as to what was going on. Sometimes I'd remember names from books I'd read a long time ago, but I read them long enough ago that I really lost track of which side-characters were who. FB is filmed well, and has its twists and turns, but it does nothing in the way of filling in any of this background. If you're a serious fan and don't need these details spelled out, that's probably just fine. But for a light fan or someone just stepping into a movie on it's own merits with no previous exposure, that's a fatal flaw. I literally spent most of the time munching tasty popcorn, staring at fantastic beasts, and being generally confused.

Moreover, while there was a pretty severe lack of exposition as mentioned above, I really felt that the pace of this movie dragged - even with it only coming in just over two hours. I'm honestly not sure what was done with most of this time. It wasn't overly exciting, and it wasn't overly informative exposition. The pacing really wasn't there.

The beasts in this flick are admittedly pretty fantastic, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who wasn't a serious series fan (and it sounds like some of them were less than ardent about it as well).