Review: Leigh Paatsch’s verdict on Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them

REVIEW: Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, J.K. Rowling’s first film as a screenwriter, is wonderfully wizardly — but it’s no Harry Potter.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (M)

Director: David Yates (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)

Starring: Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol, Colin Farrell, Ezra Miller, Samantha Morton, Jon Voight.

Rating: ***

Rowling down the other side of the mountain

A battered brown suitcase that holds a bright, shiny alternate universe within.

Eccentrically exotic creatures with bizarre names such as Nifflers, Erumpents, Murtlaps, Graphorns and Bowtruckles.

A diminutive, deceptively modest hero who can change the world with the wave of a wand.

There can be no mistaking the magically active mind of the celebrated author J.K. Rowling.

Therefore it is the return of her unique imagination to the big screen that is the much-anticipated calling card of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

Before we move to unwrap the tantalising new package put before us, just a word of caution about what will be found inside: don’t attend Fantastic Beasts expecting another Harry Potter movie.

Eddie Redmayne, left, and Katherine Waterston star in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Picture: Jaap Buitendijk/Warner Bros. via AP

While it does pass muster well enough in terms of establishing a fresh franchise to carry the prestige Rowling brand, none of her fans in their heart of hearts will rank Fantastic Beasts over any past Potter production.

Though this all-new stand-alone adventure transpires in what many will readily recognise as the wonderfully wizardly Potter-verse, there are some radically different factors in play.

The most notable is Fantastic Beasts’ prequel-ish structure in relation to the Harry Potter series, unfolding as it does entirely in New York City in the mid-1920s.

The title of the movie itself refers to a text book that will one day be in the schoolbags of every student at Hogwarts.

For now, however, the future author of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a meek slip of a man named Newt Scamander (played by Eddie Redmayne) is still gathering the research that will later make him famous.

Colin Farrell plays Percival Graves, head of security for the American congress of witches and wizards. Picture: Jaap Buitendijk/Warner Bros. Entertainment via AP

Scamander is a magizoologist (a wizard specialising in the study of magic creatures) in the midst of a worldwide expedition that, as the film opens, has brought him to America.

His sole possession is that aforementioned suitcase, which Newt rarely lets out of his sight. And for good reason, too.

For inside its bafflingly spacious confines is a realm that hosts a portable Noah’s ark’s worth of strange, magical, adorable, and yes, fantastic beasts.

While the Great Depression is yet to hit New York City, it is not exactly the happiest place to be for any of its citizens.

Rising tensions between the secretive wizarding community of NYC and the No-Majs (the nickname American magic folk have for human beings, as opposed to the very British term ‘muggle’) all around them are about to hit boiling point.

So there could be no worse time for the many residents of Scamander’s suitcase to be let loose. Or to cause all kinds of mischief and mayhem all over the Big Apple.

Dan Fogler as Jacob (left) and Eddie Redmayne as Newt check out a little creature called a Bowtruckle. Picture: Supplied

It must be said that the plotting of Fantastic Beasts — a result of Rowling’s first effort as a screenwriter — spirals off in a number of directions throughout the picture, not all of which prove to be entirely satisfactory.

Some of the storytelling dead ends are to be expected, considering there is no previously published book as blueprint for Rowling’s fans to work from.

Comfort and familiarity with this new environment are going to take some time to be achieved.

Not only is there a vast array of new characters to be introduced. There is also a swath of differing rules, regulations and power structures governing the use of wizardry on American soil.

In the most dominant plot strand of Fantastic Beasts, Scamander’s inadvertently disruptive arrival brings him to the attention of an august body of wizards codenamed MACUSA (the Magical Congress of the United States of America).

While a kindly MACUSA agent named Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston) — and later, her mind-reading sister Queenie (Alison Sudol) — come to look kindly on Newt and his suitcase menagerie, the higher-ups in the organisation remain suspicious of the visiting wand-waver’s motives.

The Demiguise is certainly a fantastic beast. Picture: Supplied

Scamander also gains an unlikely ally in his mysterious odyssey in the form of a No-Maj baker named Kowalski (Dan Fogler). This character can be more than a bit annoying at times, forever gasping and rubbing his human eyes at the shock spells and sudden apparitions happening all around him.

However, when it comes to lending some light relief and a little warmth to an often heavy-set and sterile yarn, Kowalski ultimately justifies his prominent role in events.

It will be interesting to see what Rowling’s large and studious fanbase make of Eddie Redmayne’s anchoring role as Newt Scamander.

Sure, it is still early days in what has been mapped out as a series of five Fantastic Beasts movies. Nevertheless, on the evidence we have here, it is not heresy to say that Eddie Redmayne is no Daniel Radcliffe.

Whereas the perfectly-cast Radcliffe literally grew into the role of Harry Potter as his craft as an actor evolved, the Oscar-winning Redmayne (The Theory of Everything) overcooks a simple character by throwing too many unnecessary ingredients into the mix.

There are surprises at every turn in Fantastic Beasts. Picture: Supplied

Redmayne sticks firm to his recipe of nervous tics, sudden glances and strange line phrasings for Scamander, and it won’t be to everyone’s taste in terms of what a Rowling hero should be.

Behind the camera, many of the old Harry Potter team have been recalled to active duty, and the lavish production values and ornate special-effects sequences make the most of their talents.

However, there are stretches to Fantastic Beasts where the film as a whole goes on autopilot, coasting along on the fumes of former glories as it trollies all of its many colourful characters and cunning critters from one set piece to the next.

As for the final act — where poor old New York City looks as if it might be levelled to the ground yet again by an all-in brawl between forces good and evil — the producers seem to be merely settling for some second-hand Marvel spectacle.

Here’s hoping that by the next instalment of Fantastic Beasts, they will be striving for some top-drawer Rowling storytelling.

Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them opens in Australian cinemas on November 17.

Turn around, the Swooping Evil is behind you! Picture: Supplied

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