Summary
Crimes have been committed but not just by the titular Grindelwald. Subverting canon, and perhaps not for the better, J.K.’s money train will leave a few passengers back on Platform 9¾.
The least interesting thing about J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World is Harry Potter. Please don’t send me any letters. Unless they are by owl post. Rowling’s books, and subsequent film adaptations, enchant readers because they create a world we want to spend time in. Rowling hints at so much beyond the walls of Hogwarts, and FANTASTIC BEASTS offered a opportunity to explore the history and fringes of that world. It just never takes that chance. Or any chances at all.
Picking up some time after the events of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) has been banned from international travel while Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) has been imprisoned by the Ministry of Magic. Following the latter’s escape, a young Professor Dumbledore (Jude Law) convinces Newt to go to Paris where he’s reunited with Tina (Katherine Waterston) and Queenie (Alison Sudol) and No-Mag Jacob (Dan Fogler). Together they try and solve the identity of the potentially powerful Creedence (Ezra Miller).
At least that’s what seems to happen. The leisurely narrative spends what feels like more than half the film getting the band back together, and the rest chasing a McGuffin around the Parisian equivalent of Diagon Alley. Frequently nonsensical, most of the film is one long piece of exposition punctuated by referential winks at the audience. Indeed, unless you’re a PhD in Potter, a barrage of names, locations and references will sail by quicker than you can say “Accio Wikipedia!”
Which isn’t to say that there aren’t some (wait for it) magical moments. Newt’s vast ‘underground’ menagerie is an amazing showcase for the titular beasts. Yet it’s also emblematic of the deepest flaw in the film. The location introduces us to new character Bunty (Victoria Yeates), Newt’s apparently faithful assistant, before promptly forgetting she exists. Similarly, Newt’s handsome brother Theseus (Callum Turner), Grindelwald’s offsider Vinda Rosier (Poppy Corby-Tuech), and even Leta Lestrange (Zoe Kravitz) are never developed beyond their use as simplistic plot devices.
Where the first Fantastic Beasts was unique for its distance from Hogwarts, this sequel is weighed down by that connection. Like an invisible dragon blundering through downtown Europa, Rowling’s script bulldozes its way through the city streets, throwing bits of canon about haphazardly as it goes. Far from being a self-contained entity, we’re left with a head-scratching cliffhanger and the sense that this movie was never intended to serve as anything but a trailer for Part 3.
