Movie Monday: Frantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Source

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Warner Bros. Pictures
Released: November 18, 2016

Rating:  
  

  


Review:  
I saw this movie the weekend that is came out but I have been debating writing a review for it because it wasn't my favorite thing and I hate that when it comes to the Harry Potter universe.

In the movie, we follow Newt Scamander and a trip to New York City. Bad things are happening and his beasts are starting to be blamed for some evil in the city. The plot was pretty good, all things considered, but that is really there are supposed to be a total of five movies and they needed it to lead somewhere. However I did find some faults, but firs lets talk about the good...

I LOVED the beasts! Everything about them was fun and adorable and if I could have a Niffler I would. He is hilarious. The creators did a wonderful job imagining these animals, they are close enough to realistic to make me believe that they could exist. I also really enjoyed the Muggle (No-Mag)/ Wizard interactions in the movie and very sad when it ended. I liked how Newt felt about the animals. He was a advocate for them and I love seeing that for ANY animals (even fantastical ones). Lastly, I loved the nostalgic feel of it all - wizards and magic and evil and the Harry potter world again and the music that makes me all tingly when I hear it because of the joy that HP brought me. I really loved all that...

But, I did have a very big issue with the movie overall. There was almost no character development and I don't know if that is because the beasts were supposed to be what we cared about or if the ending was supposed to pull it together and note that a different story is actually going to be told but I was just disappointed.  I liked Newt because he liked animals, but is that enough... not really I wanted to know his place in everything. I wanted more of Tina's back story as an Auror and what happened there. I wanted to love them and feel for them and what they wanted/needed but there was none of that. 

I assume that in the coming movies we may not be following Newt as the lead character so maybe they felt no need to dive into him as a character more, but a movie should be able to stand on its own and lack of character development on this one made it fall very short for me. I gave it 3 stars because of the nostalgia and the cute-pie beasties, not really anything else.

I do hope that you enjoyed it though :)