A decent film with problems.

Rating: 7/10 (25 November 2016)

Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, has problems. Numerous problems, in fact. The film itself is well shot and is competently acted, with fairly decent cinematography and direction by David Yates, who previously directed the last four commercially and critically successful Harry Potter films. And that is about all I can say about the film's positives.
The first sin this film commits is the audio. Indeed, most of the audio of most of the special effects and several characters are audible - with one exception - Newt. I don't know if this is meant to be the case, but Newt is barely audible at times, and is generally incoherent for most of the whole entire movie. Mind you, I have not read the book that this was adapted - but the original book was not a five-part epic with masterful characterization and great storytelling. It was an extra released by Rowling way back in 2001 to accompany the hype surrounding Philosopher's Stone.
This leads to yet another problem with Fantastic Beasts - the plot isn't all that well-written. The entire plot of the film was for Newt (with a No-Maj, which apparently, is what Muggles are now called in America), on a stop-over in New York to Arizona - where he will release the Thunderbird back into the wild, while also being caught up in a series of incidents regarding a Obscurant. Along the way, there is a pointless romantic sub-plot between a No-Maj that Newt runs into - a sub-plot that lingers on and on until the very ending of the film where it leaves on a cliffhanger. Several questions: what is the point of the subplot? How does it contribute to the overall conflict of Newt vs. Unknown Forces? It doesn't. It's filler, with absolutely no purpose to the plot.
But aside from these problems - comes to the supposed humor the film puts in. Look, over seriousness can backfire in blockbusters (see also: Batman vs. Superman) but when your humor all consists of the exact same thing that has been done before - like in Ice Age - you aren't exactly are going to get some laughs. Some of the humor (like the mating dance) is downright cringe-worthy, even.
The good news is that the problems with the film don't sink it. This film is held up to a fairly high standard of production, although the CGI sometimes looks like it was done on a iPhone, and the cinematography and acting are well-done, but if the sub-plot was fully removed and if Newt wasn't so incoherent, and if the cringe- worthy humour was refined to be better, this would have been a great film. Recommended, however, don't go expecting Harry Potter, Chapter 8.