Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Welcome back to the Wizarding World folks, and if you happen to find things not as you left them then, well, that’s basically the point.

A spinoff of the Harry Potter franchise, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is the opening chapter of a recently announced 5-part saga. Taking place in America during the 1920’s, the story follows one Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) as he accidentally unleashes a handful of his “fantastic” beasts upon an unsuspecting New York City. Before long, his beasts are wrecking havoc across the land and it’s up to Newt, his newly appointed Non-Maj (aka Muggle) pseudo-sidekick Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler) and ex-Auror Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston) to re-capture these creatures in order to keep the citizens of New York safe, but more importantly, to keep the creatures safe from the citizens of New York. With a dark foreboding presence nipping at Newt’s heels threatening both his own life and the lives of his fantastic beasts, it’s only a matter of time before something terrible happens that Newt cannot undue, magically or otherwise.

First off, for a movie nobody was necessarily asking for, Fantastic Beasts does a decent job justifying why this spinoff is worth your time. Harry Potter this ain’t, but there’s enough here to satisfy pretty much anyone who sees it. Newt is a perfectly fine character to hang a new franchise on, and his surrounding friends and enemies are solid characters that bring the necessary levels of charm, comedy, emotion and danger to the proceedings, giving the film a sort of odd “checklist” type of experience that seems more preoccupied with setting everything up in the safest way possible than taking any extra risks that might truly set it apart from what came before.

With a mediocre through line that tries a bit too hard to set up some kind of mythology for this new franchise, it’s not the villain nor the forward motion of the story that makes this film enjoyable, in fact, I found myself more bored than excited whenever the film pivoted to anything resembling telling a real story with consequences. I didn’t care about the main villain and his master plan, didn’t care about the danger lurking around the corner or the vague connections to the world of Hogwarts and the wizarding community across the pond; I didn’t care about a lot of what was going on unless it directly dealt with our main characters, their relationships between one another or the fantastic beasts themselves. While I’m sure all of this seemed necessary at the time, most of it doesn’t add much to the film outside of dragging out the runtime well past where it should have been cut off. I get that this is the movie that needs to lay the groundwork for what comes next, but I’m sick and tired of getting something that – as mentioned in my Doctor Strange review – plays it safe while taking no real liberties with the storytelling or character work, and simply “checks off” what should be in a movie like this as opposed to what would truly make the movie stand out from the pack.

At its best, Fantastic Beasts resembles shades of the original Ghostbusters in the way the film is structured and presented. Watch this film in its entirety and tell me that Newt’s quest to capture his beasts isn’t the same general idea as the Ghostbusters trapping evil spirits in the same city just 60 years earlier. The inherent fun of this film shines when focused solely on Newt and his mission and the more I watched, the more I enjoyed seeing him interact with his new friends and his creatures alike. There’s a sense of wonder as he shows them the vast array of beasts kept in his magical briefcase or when the action turns heavily to capturing them or even while battling it out against another wizard, but that’s about where all of the Harry Potter-esque magic ends. Maybe it’s because this is a much more “adult” affair with nary a wide-eyed child in sight to heighten the awe, or maybe it’s because the setting of the movie lends itself to being more grounded in reality than the hallowed halls of Hogwarts, but either way, it’s a bit of a shame to see that with David Yates, the same director of the last five Potter films, and J.K. Rowling, the author of the Potter books, writing the script that something more magical couldn’t be produced. I still have faith, but it’s yet another movie experience that satisfies while at the same time frustrates.

A solid first entry in a budding franchise, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them doesn’t do enough to recapture the original magic or wonder from the Harry Potter films, but does just enough to warrant more sequels and the attention of normal movie-going fans and Potter fans alike. It’s a fun world with likeable characters and an interesting concept, but it’s a little disheartening to see that the story can’t match up with the visuals and original promise of this movie. Like every other “new” franchise hitting theaters nowadays, the sequel should be a vast improvement, but if you want to see where it all begins, look no further.