Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

It is 1926 and the news is splashed on the front page of every paper in the wizarding world: The dark wizard Grindlewald is on the loose.  Beware!

 

Meanwhile, Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) has arrived in New York City with a suitcase filled with fantastic beasts from all over the world.  On account of an accidental switch, he finds himself holding a suitcase of baked goods while would-be baker Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler) unwittingly releases many of the magical beasts.  Worse, one of them bit him and he is not reacting well to the normally harmless venom.  Arrested by Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston), a low-level functionary of the Magical Congress of the USA (MACUSA, rhymes with Yakuza), Newt and Jacob find themselves smuggled into a ladies only apartment building.  Tina lives with her sister, Queenie (Alison Sudol), who takes an instant liking to fellow foodie, Jacob.

 

Coincidentally, something is lurking NYC and causing considerable damage.  MACUSA is concerned that this will expose the magic world to the No-Maj, short for "no magic"  and a disappointing American version for "muggle."  Percival Graves (Colin Farrell), the top investigator in MACUSA, is busy tracking down this monster and focuses his efforts at the New Salem Philanthropic Society (NSPS), a group that wants to expose and terminate wizards and witches.

 

It has a Harry Potter feel to it and is generally entertaining.  Redmayne does an excellent job of being an awkward zoologist who manages to be likeable.  Fogler is great as the everyman Jacob Kowalski and Alison Sudol lit up the screen with her smile and looked very like a flapper out of the 20s.  On the other hand, Katherine Waterston was given a bland character and managed to remain bland.  Samantha Morton was wasted as Mary Lou Barebone, the leader of the NSPS.  There is no range in the character, she barely achieves cardboard cutout levels of acting; the script did her no favors.  The 'twist' at the end was ridiculously predictable.  Really, I knew which character was actually Grindlewald in disguise the moment we saw him.  In the Harry Potter movies, I think there was no character I disliked more than Dobby the House Elf; here there is a speakeasy filled with house elves.  Happily, they proved to be no where near as irritating as Dobby.  There is entirely too much sentimentality throughout the movie and entirely too much time is spent on good byes.

 

The magic world is entirely too large and too wild to be contained.  The vastness of the wizarding world makes hiding it - even with powerful magic - beyond the suspension of disbelief.  By default, Muggles and No-Majs must be dull-witted buffoons to be unaware of the extensive magical world and the vast array of fantastic beasts that Newt finds around the world.  Really, he unleashed a griffin-like beast in New York and sent it on its way to find a mate in Arizona.  How does that not get noticed?  Of course, this is the same issue I had with most of the Harry Potter movies.  It is a world that would collapse upon itself if one stops to think about it.  Therefore, don't think, just watch and be amused.