Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (MA15+)
Starring: Ezra Miller, Eddie Redmayne, Colin Farrell
AFTER eight movies, how do you breathe new life into a franchise that everyone knows and loves and a lot of people grew up with?
The answer is you re-invent it.
This is not Harry Potter episode nine but a lot of the elements that drew movie goers are still there, but like the audience that started reading and watching this franchise – it’s grown up a little.
“Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” returns us to JK Rowling’s wizarding world but not as we know it. There is no Harry, no Voldemort and only a passing mention of Hogwartz and Dumbledore.
Instead a beautifully, painfully awkward Eddie Redmayne (“The Theory of Everything”) stars as magizoologist Newt Scamander in a movie that could be classed as a prequel to the Potter saga but well stands alone as much as it is part of that universe.
Under the direction of David Yates, who helmed the last four “Harry Potter” blockbusters, Fantastic Beasts is allowed to develop its own tempo and flavour.
It’s set in 1926, as Newt has just completed a global excursion to find and document an extraordinary array of magical creatures. Arriving in New York for a brief stopover, he might have come and gone without incident … were it not for a No-Maj (American for Muggle) named Jacob, a misplaced magical case, and the escape of some of Newt’s fantastic beasts, which could spell trouble for both the wizarding and No-Maj worlds.
It was a solid start (which if the rumours are to believed could stretch to five movies) to this series.
It was hard not to fall for Redmayne’s awkward Scamander. It was hard not to be drawn into 1920s New York, but it’s where it goes from here that will count. Can JK (who was screenwriter on this one) build this into something to rival Potter?
She has a talented and interesting lead and an interesting premise but is this more than a one or two movie adventure? Will the magical creatures prove to be little more than a nice gimmick? Or is this the reboot the magical realm needed? Only time will tell.
– Tania Phillips
