IT’S always brave to use words like Amazing, Incredible and Fantastic in your movie title.
‘The Amazing Spiderman’ better be amazing, ‘The Incredibles’ can’t really be just average, and ‘Fantastic Beasts’, well, let’s see.
Directed by David Yates, the man who helmed four of the ‘Harry Potter’ films, and written by J.K. Rowling, ‘Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald’ is both a Potter prequel, and the second of the spin off series featuring wizardly spell caster, Newt Scamander.
Returning to the lead role is fidgety Eddie Redmayne, an actor who always immerses himself completely into every role he undertakes, much like the beastly chameleon that no doubt features on the cast list here. He’s joined by an impressive lineup that includes Johnny Depp as ghastly Grindelwald, Jude Law as jagged jawed Dumbledore and Zoe Kravitz as Leta Lestrange.
The previous installment finished up with the eventual capture of Grindelwald, but guess what, he’s only gone and escaped again, this time his devilish sights now firmly set on world domination.
Out to stop him is Dumbledore, who enlists brave Newt to do the dirty work, while he carries on with the more important task of teaching higher level magic at Hogwarts.
Potter fans will, of course, love to dine out on what’s being served up here, and there’s plenty to digest, but therein lies the problem for everyone else.
There comes a point where you’re simply full, but this film keeps ramming food down your throat in the form of plot points to the extent that you get up feeling nauseous and confused.
You may succeed in following each twist and turn if you bring a pen and paper to map out every character’s relationship to every other character (Dumbledore is related to Bumblebee, Grindelwald is the son of Snagglepus), but good luck with that.
Overall, while the film does looks great, it could have benefited from a simpler story and some more humour from the underused Jacob Kowalski. We award it a review score of 2.5 not so fantastical stars.
Other releases: Suspiria – 3 stars.
Paul O’Rourke
