FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM (David Yates). 133 minutes. Opens Friday (November 18). See listing. Rating: NN
Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them is to the Harry Potter franchise what The Phantom Menace was to Star Wars. And that does not bode well.
In 1926, awkward English creature collector Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) arrives in New York just as the citys wizards are trying to understand and capture a destructive force raging in the streets. The film introduces a host of new characters nowhere near as interesting as the ones we already love and gets them running around delivering exposition to one another against elaborate CG backgrounds.
The first in a proposed cycle of five prequels, Fantastic Beasts may have been written, produced and directed by the same people who brought you the original movies, but theres very little of the Harry Potter magic here just by-the-numbers spectacle and noisy, empty action.
Those steeped in Potter lore will appreciate all the mythology screenwriter J.K. Rowling has seeded throughout the script. But the story were actually watching is sluggish and clumsy, with one plot twist even Muggles will see coming a mile away and another thats lifted directly from Harry Potter And The Philosophers Stone.
The actors try, or at least some of them do. Colin Farrell lets his haircut do most of the work as nefarious wizard Percival Graves, and Samantha Morton is genuinely fearsome as a witch-hunting zealot.
Inherent Vices Katherine Waterston finds a weird, tremulous dignity in keener detective Porpentina Goldstein, while Dan Fogler and Alison Sudol actually seem to understand theyre in a childrens movie giving warm, charmingly odd performances as a baker and a psychic who fall for each other during the adventure.
But were saddled with Newt as the hero, and hes a stiff. The characters quest may be interesting, but Redmaynes choices are unnecessarily off-putting: his tiresome insistence on showing us how hard hes acting has no place in a movie thats supposed to be magical.
Honestly, if you arent willing to have a little fun with the idea of chasing a jewel-pilfering platypus down Fifth Avenue, why take the job in the first place?
