If you’re looking for Hogwarts, Diagon Alley or Platform 9 ¾, you’ll have to look elsewhere. You’re more likely to find those at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Universal Studios than you are in this film.
“Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” is a different kind of Harry Potter movie.
This is a series that has grown up with its audience, featuring adult characters who live and navigate in 1920s New York City.
The film takes place when Gellert Grindelwald, one of the most infamous dark wizards in history, was alive. It’s a point the film makes early and hardcore Harry Potter fans will find familiar, J.K. Rowling has been teasing Grindelwald since the “The Sorcerer’s Stone”.
Movie fans will recognize the influence of director David Yates, who crafted the last four Harry Potter movies, beginning with “The Order of the Phoenix.” Yates is set to direct the remaining four films in the “Fantastic Beasts” series.
This film is representative of an expanding fictional universe,propelled by both new and existing developments in lore, but not by the characters that we know and love.
This is Harry Potter without Harry Potter.
Instead of Harry, we have Newt Scamander, magizoologist and author of the fictional textbook from which the film takes its name. Played by Eddie Redmayne (Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything,”) Scamander is somewhat akin to the late “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin if in place of crocodiles there were bowtruckles and hippogriffs.
Scamander is joined by exiled Auror Porpentina Goldstein (Katherine Waterson) and the fumbling “no-maj” – the American equivalent of “Muggle”- Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler).
While it remains uncertain what part these new characters will play in the upcoming movies, they are quite lovable in this one.
Scamander is both compassionate and knowledgeable in his quest to save magical creatures from extinction and educating his fellow wizards about them. Goldstein is driven by her quest to regain good standing with the Magical Congress of the United States of America -comparable to the Ministry of Magic- and Mr. Kowalski really wants to open up a bakery. They are far from perfect and sometimes even foolhardy, but they make a great team.
Much like the original Harry Potter series, this feels like a film series that will be primarily driven by its characters and the richness of the world in which they inhabit. In this way, it succeeds tremendously.
The new trio is great and makes you hope that they will receive more screen time together in the near future. They are funny and have the perfect mixture of conflict and chemistry.
J.K Rowling’s dedication to backstory shows as the Harry Potter mythos gets to shine and flex its muscle in this story, and it’s world just got a lot bigger. The variety and the uniqueness of the creatures exhibited in the film are impressive, beautiful and captivating. I often found myself wishing that they were real, longing to either pet them or adore them from afar.
The CGI effects used to bring these creatures to life are equally stunning and well employed . While there has been a recent clamor in Hollywood for a return to practical effects, this is the perfect example of a film that really couldn’t survive without CGI .
The plot was neither stellar or stale. It just was. It gives the feeling that it will get better with time as the series progresses; that it is merely setting the stage for what is yet to come. My one major quarrel is that the ending could have been better. The magical fix, which is ultimately called upon to save the day, while alluded to briefly in the early goings of the movie, felt a bit clumsy and deus ex machina in its execution.
For me, the elements of characterization and world- building that serve as the backbones of the film are also by far its strongest traits.
Overall, not bad for J.K Rowling’s debut as a screenwriter.
