Messy movie with some fun moments

Rating: 5/10 (30 November 2016)

This movie is clearly written by someone who is not used to writing movies. Which, of course, is disastrous when making a fantasy flick. Nothing serves a creative, fantasy story better than a tight, well-executed plot. I mean, look at Star Wars!
What am I talking about? Let me illustrate my opinion with some points:

The "mystery villain" (the one that destroys everything) clearly doesn't work if the audience has no clue what it could possibly be. During the entire first act we progress no further than it's some vague threat. Therefore, there is no tension in that regard at all, which makes the film un-engaging.

Both the beasts and the magic are rushed in rather quickly, at which point there is nothing left to wonder at. World-building is normally done more slowly, allow you to ease into into the fantasy setting. Again, this will prevent people from being engaged in what's happening.

An entire subplot about some newspaper owner and his two sons goes absolutely nowhere and serves no purpose.

Then there's another "mystery villain", a white-haired guy whose name is Grindelwald. A villain whose plan and purpose is only revealed at the end of the movie. Again, not very interesting to watch a movie where the evil forces are completely obscure and seem to have no impact on the plot until the very end. I don't even understand what his plan was. He keeps transforming into Collin Ferell (using polyjuice potion). In order to do what? Talk to Credence (the other mystery villain)? It seems any form would suffice for that, why use the one of some senior guy at the magic ministry? All he really did was monitor the kids he thought would form an obscurial (bad black cloud that destroys everything) so he could harness its power I guess. Then when Credence gets destroyed in the end he gives some weird, lamenting speech and start fighting everyone. Why not use that Collin Ferell disguise for once?

Our protagonist is pretty bland and most of the times has no clear motivation. He comes to the US to release his bird (even that is set up as a mystery, dear lord...), but he keeps getting sidetracked by all the things happening around him. This is important because there's no sense of a mission or task to complete. Hence, it's not very likely people will be, here it comes again, engaged.

The first 2 acts revolve around 4 people who sort of band together. However, what seems such an essential story element, has very little to do with the final confrontation. It's pretty much Newt alone getting involved.

Some steep tonal shifts. The movie is pretty lighthearted but quickly turns very dark a couple of times (wizard executions, a kid being beaten by his foster mom ... a kid killing his foster mom ... kid getting killed by wizard firing squad*).

Conclusion: the stakes are low, there's little to no tension and the world building is mediocre. At least it's lighthearted and imaginative enough to prevent people from leaving the theater in a bad mood. Also, the muggle main character works pretty well and was a nice addition to the Harry Potter universe that normally revolves mainly around wizards.
*well OK, I guess it was self-defense. Sort of. I mean, it didn't look like they "had no choice". They all just started machine-gunning him down at one point.