Almost Great

Rating: 7/10 (15 December 2016)

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them follows a British wizard in magical America as he accidentally lets a few beasts out of his magic suitcase into the country, and how he goes about finding them. In the process, the American wizard police get involved, posing a serious problem.
After learning that there would be several movies following this one, I thought there would be a whole lot of beasts roaming America. Turns out that's not the case, so hopefully they don't pull the same gimmick five times for the next few movies.
I had a lot of fun with the movie. The characters are well-performed and often comedic. Colin Farrell in particular is good. His character adds a totally different atmosphere to the movie than the original Harry Potter movies had. He's probably the most real character in the movie, and he's excellently portrayed. And despite the often fun characters contrasting his darker character, he fit in perfectly.
However, the special effects aren't very good. Sometimes they hit, but oftentimes they don't. They fall flat more when a live action character has to interact with a CGI beast. It doesn't look terrible, but it doesn't look good either. It didn't take away from the movie that much, but it was somewhat distracting regardless.
The movie was almost great, save for the last 20 minutes. It suddenly decided to be generic and wrap itself up in a forced, unlikely way and throw in a barely developed, barely foreshadowed, not really even mentioned and utterly pointless twist ending. The movie couldn't find a way not to be generic and forced to wrap up, and that proved to be the tipping point for me.
Overall Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is good. The characters are fun, the acting is great, but the special effects lack and the ending is painfully forced and poorly thought-out. In the end I'd recommend this movie.