Fantastic Beasts follows the adventures of magizoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), who comes to New York carrying a magical suitcase filled with all manner of magical beasts, although not all of them remain in the case. In a case of unfortunate timing Newt has come to New York when some unknown and unseen being has been terrorizing the city sending the Magical Congress of the United States of America (MACUSA for short) into a frenzy. Newt, with the assistance of his new Nomaj (non magical person) friend, Newt seeks to collect all of his beasts in order to prove that none of them are responsible for the deaths in the city.There is an unending amount of charm to this film helped in no small part by the delightful performance of Redmayne. Newt is the socially awkward type, averting his gaze from people in conversation wishing he could be anywhere else, he's the typical Brit a sort of wizarding Hugh Grant bumbling around, and the film barely gets under his skin meaning there's so many more layers of him to explore going forward. Katherine Waterston as Tina is a really interesting female lead, she's persistent and bossy but she feels very vulnerable in places. This is genuinely one of the best cast films there's been for a very long time, even when characters aren't given a lot of screen time they still completely embody their characters. Dan Fogler as Jacob is important as our eyes into this magical world, Samantha Morton and Ezra Miller are brilliant as witch hating Salemists, Colin Farrell is untrustworthy and incredibly intimidating as Director for magical security Percival Graves, then there's Alison Sudol as Tina's sister Queenie who is a real hark back to the stars of the golden age of Hollywood.
This wouldn't be much of a Fantastic Beasts film if it didn't feature some fantastic beasts, and fantastic they are. A sequence in Newt's personal zoo shows them in their great number, but the ones that really shine are Newt's Thunderbird called Frank, a glorious large golden bird that really gets his moment to soar towards the end. The most enjoyable of all the beasts though is definitely Newt's kleptomaniac platypus like creature, the Niffler. It is consistently enjoyable watching the adorably animated creature jumping around after anything shiny, which leads to some of the best slapstick comedy of the film.
It may seem, for the cynical, that this is a desperate cash grab to keep the Potter machine powering on, but whats so impressive about what Rowling has done is that she has moved to a completely different world, its 80 years before Potter, in a country we haven't seen before with wizards we've never met before. Its to the films strength that the Potter production team are kept in place, with Heyman producing and more importantly Yates directing, a director who established the visual style of the world that ran through the last 4 Potter Films. There is extensive work and time taken to show how different this world is, MACUSA isn't just another ministry for magic, there's a different dark wizard lurking behind the scenes and there's a very different attitudes towards Nomaj's. Unfortunately the new world means that a lot of time needs to be spent on world building for the audience, meaning this film has a lot of hard labour to do on the behalf of the films that are to come. That hard work means that this first film feels a little muddled in the end, there is just far too much going on at the same time, which means that so many characters are left underdeveloped. There is the sense that there are two stories running in this story and they only feel tangentially connected to one another. This has probably paved the way for superior sequels and Rowling barely scraped the surface of this world with Potter, there's going to be so much more from the wizarding world and its destined to be magic.
(High 3 Stars)
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