A brilliant return to the world of wizardry

Rating: 8/10 (26 November 2016)

Fantastic beasts and where to find them was great, it brings audiences back to the wizarding world of Harry Potter. We are introduced to this band of 'misfits' who end up having great synergy, this film has all of our favourite elements of Harry Potter without being the exact same thing. From the underdog/outsider characters that we all gravitate to, to the wonders of magic most notably presented through the character of Kowalski.
Yes, Dan Fogler's Kowalski was surprisingly very good, not only was he the film's comedic relief and the sort of device used to explain magic to the audiences he was also great in the more serious and emotional roles. To the extent that towards the end of the film I really did feel for him and has grown very attached to the character, something that I have not expected when first introduced to him. Eddie Redmayne's performance was not groundbreaking here but he does a good job playing the 'outsider' role in the movie, the guy who no one seems to understand or cares to listen to which makes his friendship with Jacob Kowalski all the more precious.
Another great delivery was from Colin Farrell as Graves, he isn't in this film much but whenever he is in a scene he definitely steals the spotlight, funnily enough a lot of times from the American minister of magic, Seraphina Picquery played by Carmen Ejogo. Quite a shame though because I did want to see this character shine and be of impact, but I guess as always the minister characters always seems useless in the world of wizardry.
This film is written by JK Rowling herself which from my understanding is quite impressive as writing in different forms of media is not usually a successful transition. The writing in this film was really good, so kudos to Rowling for making a successful transition.
Finally onto the beasts, I have heard criticisms on how the fantastic beasts seemed to be sidelined by the main story about the threat of the American wizarding world being revealed. However I would really disagree with that, I very much felt that the beasts and Newt Scamander was the main focus of the story while there was the underlying second arc on the revealings of the wizarding community and Geret Grindelwald. Now, I understand that Grindelwald would potentially be a large part of the upcoming films but in the case of this film that arc is definitely not the main arc but was instead introduced. The beasts definitely stole the show on this one.