Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them **** (2016, Eddie Redmayne, Dan Fogler, Colin Farrell, Katherine Waterston, Alison Sudol, Jon Voight, Ezra Miller) – Movie Review

And so J.K. Rowling invites you to a new era of the wizarding world in the first film of a new five-film franchise, a very easy-to-like spinoff prequel to Harry Potter, set in 1926.

It marks Rowling’s highly confident and polished screenwriting debut, based on her 2001 book, whose profits went to the UK charity Comic Relief. In a world lacking good deeds, full of villains and short of heroes, it is hard to quarrel with the idea that more than 80 per cent of the cost of each book goes to poor children around the world.

Eddie Redmayne stars as English writer Newt Scamander, who arrives in New York’s secret community of witches and wizards. Newt’s misplaced magical case leads to the escape of some of his fantastic beasts, which of course spells trouble for the wizarding world. Along the way, Newt encounters no-maj jolly baker Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler), the lovely Porpentina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston), the abused boy Credence (Ezra Miller), Queenie Goldstein (Alison Sudol), Seraphina Picquery (Carmen Ejogo), the wicked (Percival Graves (Colin Farrell) and many other exotic characters.

There’s often too much and sometimes too little here. Too much to cram in to two and a quarter hours in the way of characters and creatures and explanations. Too much emphasis on the marvellous period production (designs by Stuart Craig and James Hambidge), dynamic music (score by James Newton Howard) and eye-catching visuals (cinematography by Philippe Rousselot), and of course too much CGI especially, way too much. And too little in the way of coherent story telling and fresh magic.

The movie looks an absolute treat. The lavish $180,000,000 budget is all up there on screen. There is a lot of good-natured fun and easy-going laughter all the way through. But the effort to start up a new franchise shows slightly, perhaps inevitably, in a movie that isn’t really a stand-alone film, and probably not intended to be. Obviously, they want you to stay for the series. Johnny Depp’s belated appearance as Gellert Grindelwald is just a trailer for the next film.

The movie doesn’t seek to have a lot of substance or credibility, but it goes for broke on style, zest, and confidence, supreme self-confidence. It keeps moving swiftly along, crisply and smoothly edited. If the plot starts getting dull, the answer is easy with this, just send in a new character or a new creature. It’s like a Disney ride. Indeed the film is like an old-style Disney movie from the Seventies. With its antique setting, it relishes its old fashionedness, revels in it. Though it feels like it wants to be modern, it could hardly be more retro, or more traditional.

Redmayne is a warm, quirky and soothing star presence. Although his character is self described as being annoying and having no friends, Redmayne’s Newt is charismatic in a dithering Doctor Who sort of way. He has to be, he is the focus of the film. Redmayne works really hard to be likeable in his offbeat kind of manner. Benedict Cumberbatch could have done Newt, but Redmayne is just right. No wonder he was J K Rowling first and only choice.

How times have changed! In 2002, Redmayne auditioned as Tom Riddle in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets but was turned down after reading one line and Christian Coulson was cast. Now Redmayne is an Oscar winner and didn’t have to audition, and he shared in the other casting decisions.

Redmayne downplays dangerously, mumbling and muttering his lines, so you don’t catch a lot of them. He is more Mumbledore than Mr Scamander. But it works. He keeps it ‘real’. He makes extraordinary ordinary. Or is that, he makes ordinary extraordinary?

Comic relief Fogler got all his many laughs at the preview screening. Some audiences might find his performance and Jacob character resistible, but probably most will like him. They will have to. Redmayne and Fogler’s double act is at the centre and heart of the film. Meantime badness is well taken care of with the chilling Samantha Morton as monster mother Mary Lou, while, with lots to do, Farrell makes a very good, grave villain.

So there we have it for 2016 and that’s all for now, folks. Meanwhile the magic will be rowling on again in a while. Joanne Rowling says she will be writing the screenplay to the other four films herself, and the first two sequels have release dates for 2018 and 2020.

It is inspired by Newt Scamander’s fictional textbook Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them featured in the Harry Potter novels, first published in 1927, becoming a bestseller.

It was shot at Leavesden Studios, Hertfordshire, England. The New York dock scenes were filmed in Cardington Hangars, Bedfordshire. Location shooting took place in Liverpool at St George’s Hall and Martins Bank, Water Street,

© Derek Winnert 2016 Movie Review

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