Really Enjoyable

Rating: 7/10 (31 March 2018)

Continuing my plan to watch every Johnny Depp movie in order, I come to Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them.
There is no need for this movie. That's true of most sequels/prequels. This movie was made for one reason. The Harry Potter movies made money. A lot of money!! And Warner Bros were not ready to give up on the goose that laid the golden egg just yet. So they set about trying to kick start a new franchise.
These movies should not appeal to me, but I do enjoy watching them!! Maybe it's because of the fun my kids had watching them, and I got caught up in their excitement. I dunno. But I find it entertaining anyway.
I have a real soft spot for Eddie Redmayne, and I enjoyed his performance as Newt. In fact all of the leads are engaging. As for the movie sufficiently detached from the Potter books/movies so that a viewer doesn't need familiarity with the latter to enjoy the former. But there are enough call-backs for fans to know that we're still in the same universe. Depp filmed a secret cameo (which amazingly in this day and age, was kept a secret)
Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them grossed $234 million at the domestic box office to end the year to 12th highest grossing movie of 2016. So it was the lowest grossing and worst performing movie from that universe, but considering it was a prequel, that features none of the original cast I think it did quite respectably. Enough to warrant a second movie to be released this year anyways.