Best description ever…Catch them all Newt!
(Some spoilers ahead)
As someone who is a massive Harry Potter fan, I was hoping to like Fantastic Beasts but I was expecting to hate it for the same reason – knowing that any new take on the classic wouldn’t feel as good as the original. And hate it I did.
For anyone wanting to immerse themselves into the quintessentially English wizardry world, this film provides a cheap, predictable, over-Americanised soulless shell filled with frankly boring creatures, silly witch slang, a cameo by Johnny Depp and Eddie Redmayne’s atrocious twitchy performance, which has somehow like with magic carried him through his career, even brought him an Oscar. Nevertheless, once you realise he is a one-trick-pony who uses the same awkward facial expressions and body language for all his roles you begin to wonder whether he had any talent in the first place.
Once again J.K. Rowling exceeds spectacularly at the challenging task of creating the most annoying characters possible. Ezra Miller manages to surpass Redmayne’s unnerving acting with his own seizure-filled style and the cherry on top is fantastically horrible haircut making his head resemble male genitalia.
Tina, or whatever her name was, as she is so incredibly forgettable, who plays Newt’s accidental ally is probably even more obnoxious if that is even achievable. She just can’t seem to mind her own business and ends up causing them more problems than any of the bad guys.
Next, we have the one pathetic couple formed in the film by Tina’s sister Queenie and Mr. Kowalski, the clueless no-maj or muggle for the rest of us, who just don’t make any sense together. Every time you hear her say “honey” you want to bitch-slap her and it makes you ponder what Rowling thinking was when she wrote this so uninteresting character with zero oomph.
Tragically the one saving grace of the whole movie Colin Farrell gets replaced by Johnny Depp with the hope of getting his Pirates of the Caribbean fan base on board to the new franchise, which is very fortunately and promisingly moving away from America. The next 4 films would take place in several European cities and perhaps that would light up the spark ignited by the original series even if it won’t return to England.
Overall Fantastic Beasts is not fantastic at all. It is far from being perfect but it is an entirely acceptable first attempt at script writing from J.K. Rowling. She tries to make the feature unnecessarily darker and more mature but at least adds some twists to the story. However, she fails to create excitement with her unimaginative plot, terrible American backdrop and sub-par characters and most of all annoy the hell out of her hard-core fans.