Trying to function in the no-mag world

Rating: 8/10 (4 September 2017)

As I expected, the reviews of this movie are extremely binary. Some people liked it to loved it. Others hated it to one degree or other.
I unreservedly fall into the first category. It isn't a perfect movie. Few are. But it's imaginative and fresh. We begin with a world that we're familiar with. We understand the wizarding and muggle/no-mag worlds. The script can be imaginative and original without having to justify anything that happens or explain its context. The audience already expects such activities.
Certainly the plot isn't fresh. It's ground has been trodden many times before. But that's part of its charm. The world is familiar and the plot is familiar, so Rowling could take her wizarding world and make an entirely new story unconfined and unconstrained by the monumental Harry Potter history. Perhaps it was written for a slightly different audience. After all, Rowling is likely feeling very limited as a writer if all she is allowed to write is a continuation of a story that she has already told. The universe she created is diverse and complex. She should be allowed to explore it from other points of view.
I do wish that the marketing of the movie had been less reminiscent of Harry Potter. I applaud the relative lack of pyrotechnics in the movie and its more muted volume than most movies have these days. But from the advance publicity, I suspect that some people went to the movie with unrealistic expectations.
So kudos to the movie and its fresh look at the wizarding world. I applaud those efforts, and the movie gets my "thumbs-up" from me.