Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them - Review
I've never been a huge Harry Potter fan. I wasn't the person who would order midnight screening tickets to the release of one of the films, and I never even saw most of them in theaters. My first time seeing many of the Harry Potter films was actually on Freeform's Harry Potter weekends. I know I know that's lame and I'm ashamed of it, but they just never grabbed my interest. Fantastic Beasts was a different story though, something about a story not following the students of Hogwarts and the story of Voldemort piqued my interest. Let's begin with our usual starting point, the characters of Fantastic Beasts.
Regardless of the characters around him, this movie lays heavily on the shoulders of Eddie Redmayne's Newt Scamander. Thankfully for this film, he does a great job. While Newt Scamander is a bit of an odd fellow at the film's onset, rather anxious and nervous in general around others, he manages to grow on the viewer throughout the film. Seeing him grow to become more of a team player throughout the film and welcome others into his wacky life was great. Speaking of his team: Katherine Waterson's Tina Goldstein, Dan Fogler's Jacob Kowalski, and Alison Sudol's Queenie Goldstein were all great. I loved the way they worked together (granted not all of them necessarily were involved willingly), and they were one of the true bright spots of the film.
Another area that Fantastic Beasts nails is the visual department. Whether it's 1930s New York City, or the magic itself that is done throughout the film, or the CGI of the "Fantastic Beasts" I never found myself thrown out of the movie by shotty visuals. Something seemed different around the look of the magic in this film that made it seem more real to me and helped me enjoy scenes that used it even more. Old New York also looked great, as I never felt like things were stretching eras and not necessarily how they should be. While the visuals do help to elevate the film as a whole, the story tends to weigh it down quite a bit.
Fantastic Beasts' story is all over the place, in my opinion. The first half of the film takes the form of capturing back the creatures that came from the case, while the second half of the film focuses on an attack on New York that is completely unrelated to the creatures. They attempt to intermingle these stories throughout the movie but for me it never really works out. I constantly felt a jarring move when the story went from one focus to the other, then back again. "Oh cool we're back to worrying about the case, aaaaand we're back to the destruction of New York." I really felt that this could have been split up into two movies, or there could have been a better connection point between these two arcs than what was given in the films.
Fantastic Beasts, while weighed down by a story that seems confused by which direction it wants to go in, as a good start to a series of films that promises to give fans of the Wizarding World a glimpse into the world outside of Hogwarts. As I stated at the beginning of this article, I found myself enjoying this film more than previous Harry Potter films for this exact reason. My biggest worry moving forward is with the current fan reaction to Johnny Depp's role in the upcoming sequel, will the movie attempt to shove a last second switch in to explain an actor swap without compromising the story of future installments. Also in general the idea of this being a five film franchise concerns me, but if they can make it work I'll be first in line for the upcoming stories of Newt Scamander.
