Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)

Meh. I try to avoid this phrase, as I believe there is always more to a film, book, or anything. Nothing can really be described with just a bored shrug, but with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, I feel like it’s mostly the best word to describe it.

The story follows Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) , through his travels to America, however when he befriends a muggle known as Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler) , his trip is put on hold as a series of mysterious crimes take place around New York.

This story may sound like it could be a good time, showing what wizards from around the world are like, expanding on the Harry Potter universe, but it never really gets very ambitious. Most of the wizard settings look almost identical to settings we’ve already seen. Not only that, but most of the more interesting settings are done almost entirely with CGI. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing on its own, Marvel movies do this sort of thing, but the way it’s done it this just looks cheap. I get that rendering completely photo-realistic settings for real people to walk around is expensive and time consuming, but it’s not like a Harry Potter movie doesn’t have the budget for good CGI. Other than settings though, the visual effects are good. Not the best I’ve ever seen, (I’ve seen real-time cutscenes from video games look better) but it’s good enough. The acting is fine, Eddie Redmayne is pretty good and managed to be funny a few times, but it doesn’t really feel like anyone was having a whole lot of fun while they were filming.

Overall, this movie was okay. I wouldn’t go out of my way to watch it again (probably because it outstays its welcome at 2h 13m) , but I’m sure fans of the Harry Potter films will get a kick out of it. In the end, there’s really only one word to describe it. Meh.