A Movie Is Not A Book

Rating: 6/10 (4 December 2016)

The good things first: Brilliant cast. Eddie Redmayne is obviously a great actor and also the rest of the cast works out well. Just thinking about Alison Sudol and Dan Fogler, who were such a cute couple on screen. Next thing: great setting in New York showing us the wizard world of another country at another time and I really liked the idea of a Harry Potter movie without Harry Potter. Reason for that is I am not the biggest fan when it comes to the movie adaptations of the novels, because for me they live off the many details, side plots and the daily life in Hogwarts. That's what sucked me into this fantasy world like only few other books were able to and that's what never worked out for me with the movies. So I thought an original story by J. K. Rowling directly written for the media film would do a better job than it actually did in the end. And this is where my citrique starts: to me "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" was not functioning well as a film. It had its lenghts, confusing moments and sadly characters not acting right in the logic of their universe e.g. the use of spells, especially the lack of spells in certain moments. So I guess when J. K. Rowling wrote the scene in which Newt Scamander chases his Niffler in a shop, it seemed to be funny, but to me as a spectator it was just annoying having to watch it for way too long. That's probably the difference in media. In a book I would have read it out of the perspective of Newt and chased the Niffler as him and maybe having the thought afterwards: "Damn, I could have made it a lot easier!", which would be a typical Harry thing by the way. But it's easier to connect to a well written story through one's own fantasy than trough a movie in which I am a spectator and everything I see has to work perfectly and look good to get me involved emotionally. So that's why I guess it would have been a great novel, but it became a mediocre movie with a lot of good and a lot of bad sides. All the great ideas, the actors, the beasts, they just can't mask that the movie is not a round thing. For a long time it was kind of chaotic and hard to see where the whole thing was going with a lot of things happening at once, but when it finally reached the point, where it was obvious how the movie would work things out, it still took too long to finish and I was not able to get into it. So ironically one could say the movies fails to a certain point because of its writers brilliance and lack of ability to function with it in the media film.