Fantastic Beasts and the Crimes of Grindelwald is again written by JK Rowling and directed by David Yates and continues the tale of Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) who is secretly assigned by Professor Dumbledore (Jude Law) to spy on the powerful wizard Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) who is wanting to make the wizarding world the dominant one even going to evil means to make that a reality.
As someone who is not a Potterhead I thought this film was okay and I want to start with the positives firstly Mr Redmayne continues to be good as Newt Scamander and times his line deliveries very well in terms of when to be funny, when to be sweet and when to show his fascination with the creatures he collects and nutures and also Jude Law is very good as the young Dumbledore though sadly he is given very little to do in the film.
And this leads me to the 2 main problems I have with this movie:
- Firstly Ms Rowling’s screenplay is very fragmented in its structure and while watching I felt like I was watching the draft of a book on film instead of a script, one section in particular which was quite good feels like the chapter of a book where the story stops to develop a few things outside of it that in a book where you have no time limits and restrictions work great but as a screenplay the clock is ticking and anything that feels like a distraction just has to go.
And also there are times where the script struggles to give any meaningful screen time to its large cast of characters, the majority of the characters introduced in the first Fantastic Beasts film find their screen time diminished, some of the new characters don’t feel as developed as they should and Dumbledore just feels like a glorified cameo and doesn’t have anywhere near as much screen time as he should have.
- Secondly Grindelwald is a fucking boring character and it isn’t helped that Depp is just doing the same bloody performance he’s been doing for the past 5 to 10 years where he has the makeup on, he’s got the Jack Sparrow esque voice and he sounds like he’s just goddamn sleep walking through the whole thing until he gets the pay cheque.
And look I know I shouldn’t judge but Grindelwald is the title character and he should be a compelling and menacing villain who wants to shake the order of the world asunder by preying on wizard’s weaknesses and then compelling them to spread his message across the world even if it means resorting to violence but there is none of that because its stuck in this boring performance that has outstayed its welcome, it’s a real shame that Colin Farrell wasn’t able to be the villain for this new Wizarding World series as he would’ve been a much better villain and a good contrast to both Mr Redmayne and Mr Law.
And so that was Fantastic Beasts and the Crimes of Grindelwald and look as someone who isn’t a Potterhead I didn’t hate the film but it also did very little for me as its script feels more like a book that’s disjointed and its lead villain is stuck with a boring performance, 2 out of 5.
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