For Potterheads only

Rating: 6/10 (27 December 2016)

This is the other "standalone" movie released for the Christmas holiday hanging on the back of a successful franchise (the other being Rogue One of the Star Wars universe). David Yates directs JK Rowling's spin-off about the writing of a textbook used at Hogwarts, the "Fantastic Beasts" book of the movie title. This is a slight misnomer as very little writing or research took place of any description. The male lead, Eddie Redmayne's visiting wizard, Newt Scamander, promises to dedicate a copy of his book to the female lead, Katherine Waterstone's auror, Tina Goldstein. That seems to be about it as far as the textbook is concerned.
Scamander is passing through New York en route to Arizona to release a Fantastic Beast via his suitcase, which acts as a gateway to an unspecified place, into the wild, but is arrested as an Unregistered Wizard and becomes (a) engaged in retrieving other Fantastic Beasts that have escaped from his suitcase after it has become inadvertently switched with a similar case carried by a muggle baker, and (b) embroiled in the increasingly tense situation between muggles (or No-Maj's as they are known in the US) and the wizarding community.
Not a bad-sounding plot but as a non-Potter fan myself I found myself scratching my head at many of the developments in the movie. It would really pay to have read and understood the book before seeing the film to imprison an extremely large and threatening lizard-type creature. Quick! Put an insect in a teapot! ??? Err – OK.
..to catch an extremely large and threatening rhinoceros-type creature which is on heat and has a fancy for a nervous-looking hippopotamus. Perform a bizarre dance and make it roll on its back so you can put it in a suitcase! ??? If you say so The only character I really liked in this movie was the superb Dan Fogler as the muggle baker, Kowalski. His expression of bemusement was much the same as mine for at least three-quarters of this movie. I also liked the burgeoning romance between Kowalski and Goldstein's sister, Queenie, which turned out well in the end. The CGI was used a lot, but by definition of a wizarding movie, I suppose it must be.
In short, a decent afternoon's entertainment which would have been helped by a little more explanation of the Fantastic Beasts themselves, but I doubt I'll see it again.