Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

For me, this film perfectly fits the term "producer's film." There’s craft certainty, but also inner nihilism. The logical nonsense (why doesn't Scamander use his wand right away in the hunt and instead lets everything go to the extremes?) hidden under Yates' confident direction will lull you into a sense that everything is fine. When you want to recapitulate the plot after the end, you can’t. (2016-11-21)

Five years is an incredibly long time, so when the first notes of the familiar soundtrack started playing, genuine goosebumps appeared and didn't leave me until the closing credits. My beloved JK Rowling is constantly adding surprises, new ideas, and genuine magic to the script every few seconds. What's more, Eddie Redmayne perfectly fits a role for the first time in his career, a role tailor-made for his quirks and shyness, which stands out even more in contrast with the chilling (and as expected, perfect) Colin Farrell. But what I enjoy the most is that the heroes are adults who are skilled in magic, so all the chases are incredibly dynamic. Combined with the touching fairytale romance, it's not just a surprise, because I was expecting a fantastic spectacle, but I didn't expect the Fantastic Beasts to play the most touching personal notes for me. (2016-11-22)

In general, I appreciate the excessive patience of Potter fans who wait until you know who turns into you know who, but I don't suffer from such a lack of imagination that I can't imagine thousands of better ways to waste 134 minutes of my life. Yes, the film is as long and self-serving as the previous sentence. And it has a nice soundtrack. Your Universal Platypus. (2016-11-16)

Really pleasant. Not a sequel to Harry Potter, or anything like that. There are big names are thrown into the equation, but not as forcefully as I was afraid it would be. Fantastic Beasts are solving their own problems at a time, when Harry Potter’s dad wasn’t even in diapers. For the first time in his career, Redmayne actually plays a truly nice guy, who knows how wave a magic wand when necessary. The Beasts themselves are nice. The Bowtruckle and the kleptomaniac mole are easily the best. Rowling handles the story very well, functional mystery/detective story is gripping to the end. Collin Farrell’s performance is effortless, but the heart of the movie is Dan Fogler. The non-magician’s perception of the world of magic is a great idea. His resigned acceptance of everything that’s happening is magical in his delivery. At first I was worried little wary, but now I can’t wait for sequel. The music is a subtle tribute to Williamson, the main theme is truly well composed. P.S.: Let Fassbender play Dumbledore next time. (2016-11-27)

This movie is a two-hour shapeless glob of spittle, that someone spat out and left lying on the ground, just because Rowling wrote it, and Potter aficionados have to lap up anything connected to that world. If it was not a cult brand or, god-forbid, a completely independent work, it would most certainly have received a similar beating that The Last Airbender got. However, as symbolic as Potter is for a whole generation, they could afford to play on nostalgia, and, without hesitation, indulge the audience with a ton of kitsch, because the audience would surely forgive the movie for its many shortcomings. And then, if that is not enough for you, the pacing and atmosphere are completely dead, and the characters are indistinguishable. The scenes themselves are meaningless, put there just to show off the visual effects, and then there are the fast blurry action scenes, that appear lavish on the surface, but lack any real ideas on a deeper level. However, the movie suffers most from the impotence of its story - basically, nothing happens during the first hour and a half (!). Then, only in the last half hour do we get away from the long introduction to somewhere else. Rowling should have simply stuck to writing books and not tried to write screenplays, because she obviously has no feeling for writing movie discourses at all. She could have brought a more experienced screenwriter to the team, as she had already taken the position of movie producer. Although I still like the original book and its movie series out of nostalgia, this two-hour show of tedium almost bored me to death, and I can hardly remember the last time I was so distracted from what was going on in the story, by what was on-screen visually. For the last half hour, I will give it 1 star. (2021-04-09)