Lackluster spinoff from the Potter-verse

Rating: 6/10 (15 February 2018)

British wizard Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) shows up in 1926 New York carrying a suspiciously animate briefcase and soon strange beasts are running wild in Manhattan. Superimposed on this situation are some secondary stories of a dark wizard trying to establish a magical Reich, a disgraced Auror (Katherine Waterston), and a muggle cannery worker (Dan Fogler) who wants to be a baker. There is not much of a plot, the movie is primarily a series of CGI set pieces strung together. Typical of Rawling's 'Harry Potter' stories (and movies), there is a lot of clever imagery and imaginative moments that serve to cover frequent inconsistencies or lapses in logic in the plot and the ending of the film is especially contrived and flimsy (see 'goofs' for details). The 'fantastic beasts', while well rendered, are not particularly interesting, perhaps because they were just made up for the movie (the vivification of 'mythical' creatures was one of the highlights of the Potter series). The movie also suffers from the trend in the HP series to make the 'magic' more action-friendly: the wizards now handle their wands like handguns and fire spells at their nemeses, making 'magic battles' look like shootouts in Star Wars. The script is OK and the actors are all quite good in the roles (especially the central three characters) but overall, the movie is an uninspired 'by-the-numbers' opus targeting a guaranteed audience of Potter-philes.