Rating: ★★½ (2.5/5)
I watched this movie when it came out and it just didn’t grab me. I didn’t love any of the characters, I didn’t think the American setting was all that great (looking at you no-maj), and the beasts in the movie honestly grossed me out a little.
I came away this time a little more appreciative of it.
The movie follows Newt Scamander, the author of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which is an in-universe book that’s used at Hogwarts to teach wizards about, well, fantastic beasts. It’s kind of fun that they would go back in time to the 1920s to see who Newt Scamander was and why he would write a book about beasts. Turns out he’s a fairly awkward guy who really has more interest in animals than people.
I think that’s the part where I struggled with this movie initially. Newt is clumsy, awkward, and tends to mumble out all this words. He’s not so much a hero as just someone who creates messes that he then has to go clean up. He never seems to be in much of a hurry or really seems to care at all that his magical creatures are making a mess of everything. Sure, he goes to get them back in his magic suitcase, but he does it to protect the creature rather than all the people and property being destroyed around him. I think I couldn’t jive with him mostly because of that.
They introduce Dan Fogler as Jacob, a regular “No-maj” in this universe so we can have some sort of non-wizarding proxy to tell us how to feel about all this magic. I don’t think the character is all that intersting, but I do love how Dan Fogler plays him. He plays him with wonder and sincerity and I honestly am just glad to see the guy getting some work. He’s a fun addition to the story even though we really don’t need a non-magic proxy to help us through the Wizarding World(tm). We’ve been here a long time now.
We also get Katherine Waterston as Tina. She’s an Auror for the American Ministry of Magic … which is kind of funny because you’d think it would be the Magical Congress or something equivalent to the British side of things. I mean, we’re calling them No-Maj’s even though I’d assume the word “Muggle” predates any settling of the Americas. It’s not like Aluminum vs Aluminium. I digress.
Katherine as Tina gives us a detective angle around all this. Somewhere in all this mess is a kid named Creedence who is harboring some kind of obsure creature that has all kinds of power. Credence is special but we dont’ really know how. Or at least I don’t. There’s a lot between the lines here and I dont’ really know why we’re looking for him or what he does. I just know he’s powerful for some reason.
There’s also a lot of anti-wizard sentiment. I guess that’s because it’s the USA and we just have a really bad track record of accepting people of different walks of life. It’s pretty on the nose, and I don’t love it, but I understand it.
After my second viewing and writing this post, I’m still confused as to what happened and I’m not sure I could tell anyone what the movie was about being a guy losing some animals in NYC in the 20s and having to go get them back while being roped into some kind of mystery. The big loss for me in this movie is that Colin Farrell morphs into Johnny Depp at the end. Don’t get me wrong, I love Johnny Depp (controversy notwithstanding) but I like Colin Farrell doing what he does. I was pretty disappointed to see him just disappear from the role at the end.
All in all, I’m glad I watched it, but I don’t think I need to watch it again. That being said, I’m going to power through and watch the rest of these movies if for nothing else than to maybe get some more deep lore out of the Harry Potter universe. That part is always fun.