Fanciful Magic and Can We Find It?

Rating: 6/10 (20 November 2016)

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them started as a charming if verbose act of whimsy on the part of "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling. The fictitious textbook was first featured in "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" before years of grassroots Harry Potter fervor made the wordy title optimal merchandising fodder. Now the title has morphed into a narrative film about the wizard who wrote the book. A film whose title should have been "Fanciful Magic and Can We Find It?"
We first meet our author Newt Scamander (Redmayne) on a ship, sailing into New York harbor. He carries with him at all times, a brown briefcase that hides an entire zoo of magical creatures, one of which he plans to release in the great frontier of Arizona. Before he can even leave New York City however, Newt's creatures are inadvertently let loose upon the muggle community of America and the wizarding world struggling to keep themselves secret. It is then up to Newt and his new American friends, magic bureaucracy functionary Tina (Waterston) and bumbling No-Maj (non-wizard) Jacob Kowalski (Fogler) to find them before they're used as scapegoats for something far more sinister.
Taken from a chockablock collection of 85 creatures, J.K. Rowling (who wrote the screenplay) turns in an extended universe that is just as thick a muggle textbook. Within a half-hour, the audience is inundated with intricate plot mechanics that clunk and veer wildly from one whimsical set piece to another; flying by the seat of our pants until we're finally given time to breathe. We're then treated to a thicket of intrigue largely plotted with due seriousness by No- Maj zealots Mary Lou Barebone (Morton), her brood of adopted children, and their tenuous connection to Magical Congress brass Auror Graves (Farrell).
Newt's zany exploits fit these staid, sullen moments about as comfortably as a Hogwarts freshman at a Game of Thrones (2011- Present) season finale. You're never quite sure where the film wants to go, and it seems to take an arrogant delight in setting up plot point after meticulous plot point. But could we please settle on a mood or stakes that don't change with the weather?
With a reported 5 more films to follow, Eddie Redmayne's Newt are some pretty scrawny shoulders to cloak a franchise on. In any other movie, Redmayne's uncanny ability to develop pigeon-toed introverts into characters we aspire to be would have been greatly appreciated. Unfortunately Fantastic Beasts crams the Magizoologist into an overloaded story that can't decide if it loves itself more for being unnecessarily convoluted or weaving in trough-loads of fan service. What is clear is character is largely secondary; a message made painfully clear when we finally learn why everyone in the American magic community seems to be upset with Tina for some reason.
If any non-beast character leaves this movie with their head held high it's Dan Fogler's Jacob. He's pretty much around to take all the magic in and be told things everyone but he and the audience should already know. Yet when the movie abandons this ploy for a late, second-act romance between him and Tina's bewitching sister Queenie (Sudol), he rightfully takes his place as the Ron Weasley of this re-purposed franchise.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them may just be the first movie ever based on a charity campaign. 80% of the cover price of the original book went to poor children the world over through Comic Relief. Yet despite good intentions, Fantastic Beasts the movie winds up feeling more like a charity case. Who knows perhaps the companion book "Quidditch Through the Ages" will bring the magic back on the big screen. For now we'll just have to settle for this swaggering and splashy fiasco.