Welcome to the dark and dismal world of JK Rowling with added saccharin

Rating: 5/10 (23 November 2016)

Where children get threatened, beaten and betrayed by sadistic adults until they turn to the dark side... and then they get killed, utterly destroyed. Goodnight kids, sleep well - don't let the images of the poverty stricken, 1920's white trash children's' suffering and hardship spoil your sleep, it's only a JK Rowling story. As charming as the Harry Potter franchise was, despite its very dark side, the franchise has run out of originality, it's just really more and more of the same. If that weren't bad enough - is it just me or why were the only two black faces in the movie the most insidious characters? The friendly executioner woman - "Don't you want to join it dear?" - who was without compunction or mercy going to put Tina to death. Did she really have to be black? What did that add to a movie made up of otherwise a sea of white faces? And the weak, yet arrogant and inhumane president? Why did she have to be black? (Did she remind you of anybody?) All movie casting decisions are made in full consciousness - they have to be - so you see this kind of covert, yet blatant institutional racism - and I'm a white Caucasian - I have to ask myself would I want my kids to watch a movie like this? No. And not just for those reasons, the movie oscillates between these nightmarish child torturing scenes and saccharin sweet, aspartame sickening CGI fairy tale animal goo and severely unrequited love. I wouldn't want to be a woman in JK Rowling's world. There is no subtlety, no intelligence required, just the wild, swinging, telegraphed punches of an exhausted boxer, flailing around the ring before his final collapse. That aside, in the Caucasian casting department - Colin Farrell made an awesome, malevolent, bully of a baddie, Eddie Redmayne was OK as an upper class autistic English public schoolboy twit - but Katherine Waterston, Alison Sudol and last but not least Dan Foglar's excellent performances lifted this over extended, children's fantasy dirge into something almost worth watching. Sadly though, as with the Harry Potter franchise, devoid of moral imperative. OK but I think young people deserve better.