NOVEMBER 30, 2016
After a two-week break for Thanksgiving and an enormous move from our house after 22 memorable years, we’re back!
In the interim, the nation’s multiplexes have been filled up with new movies, with several opening to critical and/or box office glory, with a few others landing with a thud. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do, so let’s go!
We’ll start with David Yates’ film of J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” prequel “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” which is currently tearing up the box office, grossing more than $160 million domestically in only 12 days. The question is — is it any good?
Not really.
Set several decades before the Harry Potter tales, “Fantastic Beasts” opens in 1926 New York, with British wizard Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) arriving in town carrying an old suitcase that appears to have something inside that wants to get out. Newt meets a “No-Maj,” (the American equivalent of a non-magical “muggle”) Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler), who just happens to be carrying an identical suitcase, and wouldn’t ya just know it, the guys each walk away with the wrong suitcase. (Yeah, it’s that kind of movie.)
When Jacob gets home and opens the suitcase, all kinds of computer-generated beasts come flying out and wreak havoc on the citizenry of New York. Newt is anxious to track down the magical beasts and get them back into his suitcase. To do that, he enlists the help of Jacob, as well as Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston), a witch whose determined efforts to fight for what she judges as right has gotten her into trouble with the powers that be, and her younger sister Queenie (Alison Sudol), who is a magic expert in reading people’s minds.
This is the point of the movie where the narrative just lies down and dies and the CGI takes over. This is not to say that there isn’t lots of frantic action going on, but for all that activity, the film is (and there’s no other word to say it) dull. Even in the most mechanical of the “Harry Potter” films (all directed by Yates, not so coincidentally) had those richly-drawn characters by Rowling to fall back on. (The connection to the Potter books are fleeting, however, with brief references to Hogwarts and Angus Dumbledore.)
Here, despite Redmayne’s acting chops, Newt is almost instantly forgettable as he largely watches the action rather than leading it, and Waterston’s Tina is earnest but that’s about it. It’s largely up to Fogler and Sudol to carry the acting weight in the movie, and their charming romantic advances toward one another are among the few highlights of the film.
Besides those pesky CGI beasts, there is a bad guy in the film, Percival Graves (Colin Farrell), the Security Director for the Magical Congress of the USA, whose assignment is to try to track down Newt and stop him. Farrell plays him as a sort of boilerplate villain, though he does travel in a long dark coat with a white lining that’s absolutely bitchin’. There’s a big twist in Graves’ story that is revealed in the end, but by that time, I was long past caring.
It pains me to say that there are four more movies still to come in this series, and several storylines that will presumably be resolved in the upcoming films are introduced here involving a U.S. Senator’s father (Jon Voight) and an anti-wizard extremist group led by Mary Lou Barebone (Samantha Morton). I’m not holding my breath in anticipation.
Clearly, “Fantastic Beasts” has found its audience, but hopefully moviegoers will now turn their attention to other theaters in the multiplex that are showing other better films.
GRADE: C (mostly for Colin Farrell’s coat)
