Are you kidding me?

Rating: 1/10 (17 December 2016)

Since when movies like this one took over? No plot, no characters development, no substance, cheap jokes here and there and CGI filling up space. Just another film that tries to squeeze bucks out of franchise without genuine effort.
Nothing happens throughout the whole movie, literally. For the most of it, Eddie Redmayne searches for his beasts and tries to imprison them in his suitcase. We are supposed to be amazed by them, but we have seen alike a long time ago in previous HP, Avatar or even LOTR movies, so they alone simply don't cut it. Then there is a brief fight with "the bad slash confused guys" and that's it.
I had a hard time to find out who is the main villain almost the entire movie, and I definitely didn't discover his motives. The revelation of the villain was stupid and embarrassing and everybody except for hardcore HP fans doesn't have a chance to know what the hell is going on with him. Showing this dark matter damaging streets like each 15 minutes didn't help and got quickly boring, because it didn't pose any actual threat to our heroes, and its only purpose was to fill the holes with CGI and banging sound anyway (I guess).
I felt no connection to any of the characters whatsoever. Redmayne acts like a crazy nerdo who has feelings only for his monsters, Katherine Waterston is uninteresting bureaucratic mouse and her sister behaves like a slut. The baker was OK, but each one of them was acting unnaturally. This is completely different from HP, where I could feel for Harry (or others for that matter) struggling with his substitute family, adaptation to a foreign environment, love, hate and at last burden of great responsibility, and even though Daniel Radcliffe hasn't shown that great performance at least in the first movies, I could relate to him and understand him.
Fantastic Beasts has not brought anything new, we have seen all the wizard stuff before - all the "automated" tools working by themselves, habitable suitcase instead of a tent, creation of this defensive bubble etc. New York didn't help either, gone is the magical atmosphere from UK and Hogwarts. The magic as such is treated just too casually here.
I hadn't expected much, but still was disappointed. The thing is, that this movie isn't nowadays an exception any more, and it strongly reminds me of the last Star Wars movies, whose sole purpose is to grab your money and let you wait for next one in a trilogy to at least get an explanation and some satisfaction. Can't we produce solid standalone movies anymore? What a letdown !