Fantastic Beasts: the Crime of Grindelwald

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald  

Director: David Yates. Cast: Johnny Depp, Kevin Guthrie, Carmen Ejogo, Eddie Redmayne, Zoë Kravitz, Jude Law.

Well, if you’ve read my previous review of what I thought of the first film you might be able to skip this one, because everything I said before sadly gets confirmed for “Fantastic Beasts Part2”

It seems J.K. Rowling has learnt nothing from the shortcomings of her previous film, but crucially she seems to have forgotten what made the Potter Series so special.

I’m afraid she really must take most of the blame for this muddled mess of a film.

The plot of this film is so convoluted that at some point I just gave up and stopped asking “who?” What?” “How?” and let the film wash over me.

What’s so frustrating is that there is so much potential here. There are indeed still some faint glimmers of that warmth and inventiveness from the original Harry Potter magic, but on the whole they are mostly eclipsed by everything that was wrong in the first one, to which I had given the benefit of the doubt, and which is by now amplified if not doubled.

We start off with one of the most confusing chase sequences I’ve seen in the last few years and then proceed to introduce characters over characters across a series of countless meandering subplots which not only lacked charm, suspense, mystery and humour but left me completely cold and actually a bit bored too.

For full disclosure, I actually watched an extended version with 7 extra minutes, none of which added anything to the previous (and already too long) cut.

Just like in the first one, Eddie Redmayne’ Newt is pretty much relegated to a side show: his character still remains a mystery to me, not so much in terms of plot, but mostly in terms of why should I care about him? 

Meanwhile the best people from Part 1, Queenie Goldstein  and Jacob Kowalski are now completely wasted. 

Johnny Depp , in what turned out to be his last Hollywood blockbuster (He has been recast for the next film by Mads Mikkelsen ), is essentially playing Voldemort 2.0, with pretty much the same evil plan in mind (to rally as many followers as possible), but does a good job at being creepy despite the very few scenes he’s in.

Jude Law also does the best with the little material he’s given, though on a very superficial level I was annoyed by the fact that he’s wearing normal clothes and not wizard robes (as you can see I had time to let my mind wonder about these pointless details).

My heart skipped a beat or two the moment we were back in Hogwarts again for some of the best moments in the film, but those few fleeting scenes only served to reminded me how much happier I was there. 

This franchise is sinking lower and lower and they’re going to have to make some real magic to un-dig it from the pit of boredom and make me excited again about the next 3 sequels!!