“Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” is the newest movie in the unnecessarily-long Wizarding World franchise. It follows multiple story lines (which become confusing), but it largely focuses on Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), a magical zoologist and the main character from the first film, “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.” “The Crimes of Grindelwald” also follows a multitude of characters from the first film, and this is where the movie quickly becomes overwhelmed by the massive abundance of characters, from both the first film and this one.
The main plot of this movie has to do with stopping and capturing the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp), while also having magical beasts thrown into the movie so that the title isn’t a complete lie. Though the first half of the movie is fairly coherent, after a certain point, the movie becomes confusing and incredibly boring. The movie is competently made, at least in terms of its editing, sets and costumes, yet it contains poor and uninteresting dialogue and plot lines that seem to be written by a camp counselor creating a scavenger hunt for the kids.
Despite what you may have inferred from my opener, the movie was enjoyable. I love Harry Potter. It’s one of my favorite movie franchises and it is definitely my favorite book series. I also enjoyed the first “Fantastic Beasts” movie. Other than the subplot with Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller), it was a fun movie and a good addition to the franchise. That’s why I went into this movie hoping that it would be good. And while I was disappointed in this cash grab, it was relatively well-made.
To start off, though the fantastic beasts that were in this movie felt a little shoehorned, their appearances actually made the movie more fun to watch, and their unique designs reminded me of the initial joy I had as a little kid seeing Harry Potter for the first time. In fact, every time a fantastic beast is on screen, it’s generally enjoyable, especially the Chinese lion-dragon . Along with the beasts, the first half in general is fairly enjoyable, although I wouldn’t call it memorable. It wasn’t boring or dreadful, and here was a decent amount of action and world-building that reminded me why I liked this franchise in the first place.
Lastly, Jude Law’s portrayal of Albus Dumbledore, though limited in screen time, introduced the most interesting character. Law gave nothing less than his best in this film, and I would expect nothing less from an actor of his professional standard. Though he’s not nearly as good at portraying the character as Richard Harris or Michael Gambon, that seems more to be a result of his limited screen time and not his acting ability.
So now for the many, many flaws in this movie. “Fantastic Beasts” is a cash grab through and through. I understand that all movies, ranging from arthouse film to superhero blockbuster, aspire to make money. . That being said, if you’re going to spend $200 million making a movie, it would be advisable to make that movie good. However, everything in this movie feels as though it was put in just so Harry Potter fans would see it.
Unfortunately, there is nothing memorable about this movie. Even in the worst Harry Potter movie (which in my opinion is “The Half-Blood Prince”), there is at least something memorable. “Fantastic Beasts,” on the other hand, throws so much stuff into the mix it not only becomes overwhelming, you feel like you don’t get to know the characters as well as you should. While I know Scamander is supposed to be the main character, he feels robbed of screen time by some of the less interesting and unnecessary characters.
Going off of the unnecessary characters, “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” introduces one of the most unnecessary movie characters since Rose and Holdo: Nagini. Any Harry Potter fan will instantly recognize the name Nagini as Voldemort’s snake in the original series. She was menacing and, even for someone who likes snakes, pretty horrifying. However, in this movie, she’s a person. That’s not a joke! Her character is a woman who can transform into a snake. This seems completely unnecessary for this story, and it feels like an attempt to throw in a character from the original movies so that the audience can be entertained by their mere presence. Not every character needs a backstory, especially not a giant evil snake!
Depp does a reasonable job at playing Grindelwald. He’s not fantastic, yet it’s not his worst performance ever. I have to commend him—for the past fifteen years, Depp has been playing the same character in almost all of his movies—Jack Sparrow. His deviation from that character alone makes his portrayal of Grindelwald notable and almost commendable. That being said, Grindelwald isn’t a great character. He looks weird and is hardly as charismatic as the movie suggested he was. However, I was pleased that they finally explored Dumbledore’s sexuality with the introduction of Grindelwald. Though it’s not overt, it’s definitely obvious and done very respectfully.
The funniest part of this movie was the dialogue, which I’m positive was unintentional. All I can say is that the greatest (sense the sarcasm here) line in the Wizarding World franchise is “He’s the best teacher that we’ve got,” and it was written and delivered so poorly that I let out a loud laugh when I heard it.
“Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” is one of those movies that you can easily miss. It’s likely the worst movie so far in the Wizarding World franchise, yet it doesn’t in any way ruin the franchise. However, it wasted two hours of my life. It’s the same way that the lackluster “Hobbit” didn’t lessen the enjoyability of “ The Lord of the Rings” franchise. Though I was not miserable in this movie, and there were aspect of this movie that I liked, “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” plays too heavily on nostalgia of past Harry Potter successes while introducing weak and uncompelling characters. It possesses poorly written dialogue and contains confusing plotlines that eventually become boring and uninteresting.
2/5 Stars