DVD: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

I really don’t like Harry Potter but I do love Newt Scamander. At least I did in the first Beasts film. A bumbling eccentric Brit getting into all sorts of trouble in New York, with a hint of magic to boot, what more could you want?

Well, lots more if Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is anything to go by.

Gone is the bumbling, light-hearted adventures, and inserted from the very beginning is a tour de force of special effects and over the top action literally hurled at you with no thought for your mental health or your eyeballs.

There seemed to be more characters and more plot directions this time, but none of them were really fleshed out, despite the massive run time.

Depp was surprisingly underwhelming, especially seeing as he is the man of the hour, but Jude Law was great as a warm Dumbledore and Zoë Kravitz as Leta Lestrange added some much-needed chemistry, even if the film tended to ignore it for a preference of a romantic interest with all the appeal of a wet fish.

With a seemingly total lack of direction, other than hurtling towards a finale, of which we can’t talk about due to spoilers, the film seems to lack any sense of direction, and with Eddie Redmayne not getting the screen time he deserved the film lacks that special ingredient that made the first so damned enjoyable.

I’m not sure how I feel about there being at least 3 more films in the series, as after watching this one, I could care less for the next one, let alone two more.

Rating: M Suitable for mature audiences 16 years and over. NOTE: Violence.

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