Film Review - Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (12A)

You're too good, Newt. You never met a monster you couldn't love.

I'm going to cut right to the chase here. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is a big, beautiful... mess. There is much to enjoy in J K Rowling's second foray into the 1920s Wizarding World, so many individual moments to love. However there's simply no bypassing the film's basic flaws. 2016's Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them told a story with a coherent narrative that tied its up threads in satisfying fashion, while teasing out a few tantalising strands for the sequel. This new movie is a whole different beast - undeniably fantastic, but equally frustrating.

The central problem is the plotting, of which there is so, so much.

The story picks up in 1927 a year on from the previous film, with the dark wizard Gellart Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) breaking out from enchanted custody and resuming his search for the powerfully magic young Credence (Ezra Miller), who he wants to groom for his own nefarious purposes. Reticent hero Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) discovers that the British Ministry of Magic wants to hunt down Credence too - and destroy him. Then Newt is sent on a mission of his own by none other than a young(er) Albus Dumbledore, to save the young man's life. 

That little lot we could deal with along with the saga's romantic complications, but several additional plot lines are woven in, resulting in a narrative too splintered to cohere properly. Only in the film's latter stages does it all come together (and that's by way of several hefty exposition dumps). The result is that you're unable to focus properly on any one thread. It's not helped by a narrative choppiness - possibly due to editors hacking Rowling's labyrinthine narrative into a manageable running time - so that certain popular characters' story arcs get disappointingly short-changed.  

It's a massive shame, because this movie is crammed with delights deserving of a tighter showcase. David Yates and his team share a decade of experience on these movies, so the world-building is staggeringly good ('20s London and Paris both look magnificent and the return to Hogwarts is triumphant). James Newton Howard's score will make souls soar. The beasts themselves are creations of wonder and the humans are even better. 

Chief among these is Redmayne, who inhabits the awkward and endearing Newt completely - a wholly unexpected and refreshing kind of leading man. But Jude Law is also a terrific Dumbledore, Dan Folger heartbreakingly sincere as Newt's muggle-pal Jacob, Zoe Kravitz poignant as his old schoolfriend Leta Lestrange... And Depp exudes slurry menace as the elegantly wasted antagonist. Everyone is on point here, they just need more room to breathe and expand, particularly the smashing Goldstein sisters.

As ever there's no shortage of ingenuity in Rowling's screenplay; she clearly loves developing her own creation (even if the story appears to chuck a few bombs into her own literary canon). There are great ideas about insidious politics and how good people can be duped by evil, along with the clever integration of fantasy with actual 20th century events. But oh it needs proper space and clarity.   

The film's ending sweeps away much of the clutter, so that Fantastic Beasts 3 will have a chance to shape itself into something more focused. But for this episode the problems are already built in. If you're a Potter-head - and it seems I am - then you'll probably have a fun and absorbing experience in spite of the deficiencies. For Wizarding World agnostics, however, The Crimes of Grindelwald will prove the wrong kind of overwhelming. 

Gut Reaction: Real enjoyment with moments of wonder, humour and emotion. But a sadness feeling too as it all failed to gel.

Where Are the Women?: J K is a genius, but her sheer ambition got the better of her this time around. And some of her fascinating female characters (along with the male!) suffered as consequence.

Ed's Verdict: 6.5/10. Fantastic Beasts 2 is a constant source of delights and at points has a genuine awe-factor. I just wish it had come together into a satisfyingly unified story.