Were this film not part of the Harry Potter universe, would you care about it? I’m serious. A handful of fantasy movies are made every year, and the difference between this one and, say, Jupiter Ascending, is not nearly as large as one might assume. You take away the name J.K. Rowling, erase the hype, give it a release date of January instead of Thanksgiving, you’ve got yet another story of weird dudes chasing weird dudes around the big city.
Traveling zoologist/game warden Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) arrives in NYC in 1926 and can’t wait to wreak havoc. Not intentionally, of course. But when you tote an easily-unfastened Pandora’s Box of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, you have to expect that at some point they’re going to get loose. Unfortunately for Newt, his relatively docile platypus-like niffler escapes on the same day a magical monster has torn up a city block. In the process of subtle recapture, Newt 
attracts a disgraced auror, Porpentina or “Tina” (Katherine Waterston), and a disgraced businessman, Kowalski (Dan Fogler). Newt identifies Kowalski as a Muggle only to be corrected by Tina: “Muggle? Muggle?! Please, we Americans have our own slur for non-magic folk. We call that guy a ‘Nomag.’ “ (It rhymes with “fromage.”)
As I come to think about it, those might not be her exact words.
Tina leads us through the inner workings of the United States magic government offices if for no other reason than to demonstrate penetrating our magical government is equally as easy as getting through Target on a weekend. Don’t get too excited about magic hitting our shores, Americans – David Yates studied pre-Depression era NYC and made it look a great deal like London. It was a nice way for Rowling to get in a jab or two at American xenophobia, but little about this film will remind you exclusively of Manhattan.
Fantastic Beasts is neither without charm, nor humor. Both are demonstrated in my favorite scene where Eddie Redmayne has to, I kid you not, seduce a magical rhino-like creature. I like your work in the moment, Eddie, but Oscar ain’t calling for this role. Scamander, Kowalski and Porpentina all seem like wallflower guests at an after-work mixer. I’m sure they’re nice people, but the shy, retiring routine (especially as found in the men) only goes so far on celluloid. Aside from Newt’s ass-shake, I found this trio equally as memorable as the personalities from Phantom Menace.
Far as I can tell, Dan Fogler has been hidden under a rock since Balls of Fury. Not saying that’s a bad thing necessarily, and long as we’re
going in that direction, I can’t remember Samantha Morton since Minority Report, where she also ran perpendicular to Colin Farrell. It’s nice to unearth some of these trinkets, niffler-style, and present them to audiences before burying them again.
To paraphrase my daughter, who I think nailed it best: the Potter universe is about personality and character; the magic is secondary. We don’t root for Harry, Hermione or Ron because they can do magic. We root for them because they are the heroes we want to be. If you take away character, all you have is the magic. And when all you have is the magic, all you reflect upon are the rules of magic, which are, quite frankly, arbitrary. The magic is obscenely arbitrary in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. It can do whatever we want it to do unless it can’t. There’s charm in this film, maybe even enough to recommend it – given that it needs no help, however, please pretend I didn’t.
♪They say the troglodytes all fight on Broadway
They say there’s always magic … “THEY DO NOT!”
But you’re walkin’ your niffler
And no one gives you a sniffler
It’s like a spell convincing all they forgot
They say that I won’t last too long on Broadway
I’ll catch a thestral cross the pond they all say
But they’re dead wrong cuz I got a job
Gotta to snag that glowing blob
And when I do, your uncle’s Bob on Broadway♫
Rated PG-13, 133 Minutes
D: David Yates
W: J.K. Rowling
Genre: Potter-less Potter
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: The Potterholic Anonymous crowd
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Muggles
♪ Parody inspired by “On Broadway”
