Not fantastic, but still pretty good

I was never a huge fan of the Harry Potter films; they always struck me as being made for the huge constituency of Potter fans who wanted to see every aspect of J.K. Rowling’s world faithfully captured on the screen. There’s a lot of pointless spectacle; the quidditch matches, for example, have no narrative purpose but the fans want to see them so in they go. In that sense the Potter films are not adaptations so much as documents.

As a prequel of sorts Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them starts with a blank-ish slate. Harry Potter’s world exists but it is on the other side of the Atlantic and – since this is set in New York in the Twenties – it is some 80 years in the future. The result is a film that, for the most part, is a very satisfying extension of the world into which Harry will be born. Production designer Stuart Craig has a wonderful time with a steampunk vision of Manhattan and it sets the mood expertly.

This time round our hero is Eddie Redmayne’s Newt Scamander who has come to New York at the end of his journey as a sort of sorcerous David Attenborough collecting specimens all over the world. He has a case full of the aforementioned creatures which are banned in New York. When he accidentally swaps cases with Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler), the creatures escape and chaos ensues.

Newt has to recapture them as well as encountering the realities of his new environment. This is the magical equivalent of Prohibition era New York. The magical community has gone underground and is under threat; not only from a mysterious invisible presence that seems to be tearing up the city but also Grindelward, a missing dark wizard who may be heading to Manhattan. The Magical Congress of the United States has its work cut out and they could do without Newt’s interference.

There is much to enjoy about Fantastic Beasts. It is genuinely exciting and thrilling, as well as being quite charming in places; it will have to appeal to children as well as adults. Generally it’s well conceived and the running time of a shade over two hours makes it relatively pacy.

Where the film fell down for me was in a script that tries to cram in too much plot without giving us any character. One of my issues with J.K. Rowling in the Potter books is the amount of overwriting involved, even if she is creating a world out of nothing where everything has to be explained. Even her Robert Galbraith books – which I enjoy immensely – seem a little wordy.

In this film however there is an absence of detail. We know what all the characters do, but we don’t know who they are. Newt’s academic diffidence is overdone to the point where almost every line is delivered looking at his shoes, or at the floor, or generally avoiding eye contact. This gets wearisome after a while; it’s a collection of characteristics rather than character.

There are also rather too many fantastic creatures. They come at you with dizzying frequency which not only stretches the CGI to the limit but also, I think, diminishes the sense of wonder. We never quite get the chance to appreciate them before the next one comes along.

The plot doesn’t hide its secrets very well either. There are no great surprises when the villains are unmasked and there’s a general lack of imagination in the main story. The sub-plots on the other hand are generally much more satisfying and the story of Jacob and Queenie (Alison Sudol) is the best thing about the film.

In David Yates, who did four Potter films, the franchise is launched in a safe pair of hands. However, as John Glen was with the Bond pictures, there is a tendency to be effectively a ‘house director’ and sacrifice imagination for efficiency. It’s no coincidence I think that the best of the original franchise Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was the one directed by the only film maker heavily invested in magical realism.

On the whole there is a lot of hope for the future. But given that we are allegedly to have another four Scamander movies it would be nice if the franchise felt confident enough to take a few risks. The revival of the Bond movies came when they started thinking out of the box in terms of directors and it would be interesting if Harry Potter’s custodians took a punt on a director of vision and flair for the next one.