Mediocre Movies and How to Avoid Them

Rating: 6/10 (16 July 2017)

"Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" is an American/British co-production from last year (2016) that runs for slightly over 2 hours plus roughly 10 minutes of credits. If you read the names of writer J.K. Rowling and director David Yates, you have possibly guessed correctly already that this movie takes place in the Harry Potter universe, namely roughly 70 years earlier, during the days between the two great wars of the 20th century. Fittingly, the visual style of the film reminded me of Boardwalk Empire on more than one occasion. So I guess they did a good job with making things look the way they were back then. But of course, in the center of it all is no gritty crime drama, but it is all about the fantasy. The world of magic is a taboo at that point and a secret society tries their best to keep it that way and to keep people away from finding out about the infinite supernatural possibilities that are out there waiting to be explored.
This is where title character Newt Scamander comes into play. He is a young wizard traveling from Britain to the United States and we follow his journey involving new friends and creatures during these 120 minutes. He is played by Eddie Redmayne, the actor who won an Oscar for playing Stephen Hawking not too long ago, and I must say I like him quite a bit. This is also why I am fairly disappointed how things turned out here. Despite playing the central character, Redmayne never really was given the opportunity by the script to show us his range. Some supporting players had better material than he did. Speaking about supporting characters, I was surprised how the biggest supporting characters were played by relatively unknown actors here, but hey, Rowling made Radcliffe and Watson famous, so maybe she wanted to do something similar here, even if the actors I am talking about are of course grown-ups already. I am not sure. Perhaps it would have been the better opportunity to choose established and famous actors for these roles like they did with Maggie Smith and Alan Rickman back then to mention just a few. Still I believe that these relatively unknown actors did a decent job for the most part. The core problems here are elsewhere. The one main problem is that the film keeps losing itself in visual effects on many occasions. And no matter how good they may be, they can never make up for lengths in the story and insufficient character development. This is also the aspect which eventually got me giving this film a thumbs-down and a negative recommendation.
I do believe that this film is worse than all the Harry Potter films. Good actors are wasted for characters that are really not well-written at all and also do not make a lot of sense. Yes this especially refers to Colin Farrell here. By the way, after Gilliam's Parnassus movie (because of Heath Ledger's death), this is already the second time he plays the same character like Johnny Depp in a film. And here we have also already the possibly biggest surprise of this film we have here. They managed to keep Depp's inclusion (even if he is gone seconds later again) a secret. Depp, however, will have to do something really great in the upcoming movies if he wants to get this franchise on course. Yep franchise. Of course they are cashing in further with the Potter universe and there will be up to 5 films about Newt Scamander and his companions in the next years. Judging from the quality of this one here, I think one could have been enough. Oh well, there is certainly some irony to the fact that this one here won an Oscar, an achievement that none of the Potter movies have in their uncountable number of awards. Then again, I don't want to be any more disrespectful. The costumes were good I guess and it can be noted that a film can have great costumes and still come short overall with regards to everything else. Or lets say most other aspects. Of course the effects are strong, in quantity and quality, but like I said: To me it looks like they were used very much to make people forget about the lack of sufficient character developments and convincing story-telling. The introduction to the world and new city in the first hour was decent (so was the botched execution scene) and had the film kept that level, I'd certainly have reacted more positively to it all. But it did not. "Style over substance" is a fitting description and I suggest you watch something else instead. I must also say that this hardly felt like a Potter film to me. Apart from occasional references like Dobby, the film felt like a standalone movie, but maybe that's also because the story will go on for a long time still. Not a good standalone movie though. I truly truly hope the second film will be better.
Correction: I liked it more on rewatch, so I will give this one an additional two stars and raise it from previously 4 to 6.