Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Review: Critters Win

Is Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them worth watching?

It depends how much you love the Wizarding World. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is at its best as a whimsical creature comedy set in 1920s New York, and at its weakest when it stops to lay foundations for a bigger saga. Eddie Redmayne’s shy magizoologist and Dan Fogler’s warm-hearted Jacob are good company, and the beasts themselves are a delight. The trouble is a gloomier second storyline that crowds the fun and a climax that swaps charm for noisy destruction.

What is Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them about?

In 1926, the British wizard Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) arrives in New York carrying a battered leather case that is magically much bigger on the inside, housing a collection of rare and dangerous creatures. When some of them escape into the city, Newt is pursued by the American wizarding authorities and falls in with Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston), a demoted investigator, her sister Queenie (Alison Sudol), and Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler), a No-Maj, or non-magical person, who stumbles into the chaos. Meanwhile, a mysterious destructive force is tearing through the city and straining relations between the magical and non-magical worlds.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is directed by David Yates, who made the last four Harry Potter films, from a screenplay by J.K. Rowling. It is a British production in English and runs 133 minutes.

A creature feature with real charm

The film is happiest when it is simply showing off its menagerie. Newt’s case opens into a world of habitats and animals, and the creatures are inventively designed, from a thieving, glitter-obsessed Niffler to majestic, strange beasts that feel genuinely wild. Their escape across Manhattan gives the first half a playful, slapstick energy that recalls the gentler early Potter films.

Redmayne plays Newt as awkward, kind and more comfortable with animals than people, a refreshingly unheroic lead for a blockbuster. Dan Fogler is the film’s secret weapon: Jacob, a would-be baker with a big heart, is the audience’s surrogate, and his wide-eyed delight at magic gives the film much of its warmth. Alison Sudol’s Queenie adds a bright, flirtatious spark, and her scenes with Jacob are among the most endearing.

The Jazz Age as a magical playground

The period setting is a clever way to refresh a familiar world. The production design and the Academy Award-winning costumes create a rich 1920s New York of speakeasies, department stores and grand municipal buildings, while the American magical government adds a new bureaucracy with its own rules and paranoia about exposure. It gives the film its own identity, distinct from the Hogwarts stories.

Where the franchise gets in the way

The problem is that the film is also setting up a five-film series, and it shows. Running alongside Newt’s comic adventure is a much darker plot involving a troubled young man (Ezra Miller), an anti-magic campaigner (Samantha Morton) and a senior official in the magical government (Colin Farrell), and the two halves never fully mesh. The darker strand is sombre, sketchily explained, and seems designed mostly to introduce names and ideas for later instalments.

By the final act, the gentle creature comedy has given way to a large-scale, effects-heavy showdown that feels generic next to what came before. Tina, meanwhile, is left rather underwritten, and Waterston has little to do but look concerned.

Who should watch Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them?

It is best for Harry Potter fans who want more of the Wizarding World, families with older children, and anyone who enjoys light fantasy with memorable creatures. It works as a standalone adventure, though it is best enjoyed after the Potter films. There is some frightening imagery and destruction, and the darker subplot touches on child abuse, so it may be intense for younger viewers.

If you want to continue or compare:

• Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, the direct sequel, where the franchise’s darker politics take over completely.
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which shows how magical creatures and a lighter touch can sit comfortably alongside darkness.
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, Yates’s grand finale to the original series.

The verdict

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is a pleasant, often charming spin-off whose best elements, the creatures, the period setting and Dan Fogler’s Jacob, are undermined by a heavy-handed franchise plot. Fans will find plenty to enjoy, but it is a spin-off more than a spell-binder.

Rating: 3/5