'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them' has too much of a good thing
Having exhausted the Harry Potter cosmos, J.K. Rowling has set in motion a new franchise linked tangentially to the old one. 鈥淔antastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,鈥� the first screenplay written directly for the screen by Rowling and directed by 鈥淗arry Potter鈥� movie veteran David Yates, is about the exploits of Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), the author of a textbook on magic used by Harry Potter. Reportedly Rowling and Co. are signed up for four sequels. Here we go again.
It鈥檚 all fairly entertaining, as Newt the wizard-scholar accidentally lets loose a menagerie of creepy-crawlies in 1926 New York and then confronts the havoc they wreak. Along for the ride are Tina (Katherine Waterston), a security officer with the Magical Congress of the United States of America (MACUSA), and her frizzy blond Jazz Age sister, Queenie (Alison Sudol); Percival Graves (Colin Farrell), a shifty MACUSA operative; and Jacob (Dan Fogler), a baker who gets swept up in the acceptably rendered CGI proceedings. Jacob and Queenie fall in love, and their scenes have a sweetness that reminded me of the clueless lovebirds Papageno and Papagena in Mozart鈥檚 鈥淭he Magic Flute.鈥�
Rowling has a voluminous imagination and Yates keeps things humming along, although, as was also true of many 鈥淧otter鈥� movies, there is often too much of a good thing. But the film is fine enough to make you forgive, if not forget, the fact that it exists primarily as a corporate enterprise and not as an imaginative tour de force.聽Grade:聽B (Rated PG-13 for some fantasy action violence.) 聽
