Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Global Swarming
or
The Trials of the Mag-ecologist

I saw all the "Harry Potter" films, but didn't read the books; I only made it half-way through the first one, and it was at that point, I "knew" what style of writing I was in for and I didn't want to invest the time in reading the entire series. Plus, I'd had my fill of young mage's learning their trade, having read Neil Gaiman's "Books of Magic."

But, "Potterer" J.K. Rowling has an entertaining, spunky voice to her writing, and she needn't depend on writing "Potter" in perpetuity to make her living. But, as long as the "magic" happens at the bank, why shouldn't she keep up with the "Potterverse?"

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them started out as a Rowling-penned encyclopedia of things odd and ambulatory, scaled and winged in the wizard's world. Rowling has fashioned that "reference" book with some arcana to make a viable screenplay for the film. If there is one criticism of the whole enterprise, it's that they're trying to squeeze a few films out of the threadbare source and have invented yet another Voldemort-style villain arc to create a through-line for the story. It seems like we've been here before and the basic concept is enough to make a couple less films with a strong story-line with a unique cautionary tale about bio-diversity and preservation without having to resort to the villain plot (especially when it seems so unnecessary to the basic thrust of what she's come up with for the "A" story). When you couple that idea with the character-reveal similar to the one in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, one fears that we're going to be making too many trips to the magical well. That's the bad news.

The good news is that Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is a delightful entertainment, even with its bare-bones structure and shorn of the teen-angst of the Hogwarts alums, and the new film's hero, Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) doesn't have the orphan-drama baggage of Master Potter and his class. There's less soap bubbles mixed in with the fairy dust, keeping the larger issue of magic/non-magic relationships and the specific mission of Mr. Scamander, which is the securing and maintenance of endangered beasts of a special nature.

Call him a mag-ecologist (although Rowling labels him a Magizoologist).

It is 1926, as Scamander travels to New York with a valise that that growls and shudders at the most inopportune times—like at the immigration desk. Newt has traveled from England (he was kicked out of Hogwart's and why is not specified in the film) to track down some escaped critters that might cause problems in the Muggle-world by exposing the existence of the magical one.

Things are already dire; as we learn in an opening montage of animated newspaper headlines (Rowling learned that trick from Alfonso Cuaron, who used the same technique in the third HP film), a magical miscreant named Gellert Grindlewald (???)* has escaped from some porous prison somewhere (magical rules are always slippery and the ones that might apply to Dr. Strange don't in Rowling's world) to do something we know not what—it can't be good, or specified apparently, and that's one of the shortcomings of the film.

The escape of Grindlewald is causing a conniption in magic circles (headquartered in New York at the Magical Congress of the United States of America, or MACUSA) because they want to stay secreted away from the Muggle (referred to as No-Maj's in the States) world—a way of life that seems extraordinarily impractical and convoluted, just to keep Muggle/No-Maj's from asking them to do magic favors ("I've got this thing...right here"). Well, MACUSA is all up-in-arms about Grindlewald, but they also know of the beasts that seem to have got loose and aren't doing much about it, other than to send a disgraced Auror, now investigator, Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston) to do some perfunctory looking.

The Magical Congress of the United States of America HQ

Newt and Tina encounter each other as the zoologist tries to trap an escaped "Niffler" (attracted to and given to the pilfering of shiny things) who has inconveniently run into a bank. Getting mixed up in the hi-jinx is Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler, the welcome "explain-to" character), a No-Maj who is at the bank to try and secure a loan for a bakery he wants to open. It becomes inconvenient to mind-wipe Kowalski and in best silent-movie convenience, he manages to swap valises with Scamander, letting loose a couple more creatures that the mage has hidden there.

A "Niffler" caught red-pawed in the act

One should explain that Newt's valise is the neatest space-bending device since the Tardis and provides all sorts of good comedic effects and a truly wondrous touring experience once we "get into it."

Anyway, "hilarity ensues." But, there are dark tidings beyond the levity. There are the Barebone family (led by Samantha Morton), who are the locus for the New Salem Philanthropic Society, a No-Maj organization that is convinced witches are real and should be expunged from society. She is treated as any crackpot but the MACUSA worry what might come of them if they are exposed as real. They, therefore, have a Chief of Security named Percival Graves (Colin Farrell in a nifty performance), whose radical ideas of security involve putting errant wizards to death.

He'd get along great with the New Salemers—and, in fact, he does, using the insecure young son Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller, the once and future movie-Barry Allen) as both spy and potential ally for seeking out information about both the Society and word on the street about wizards. That seems a little odd, doesn't it?

Director David Yates directed the last few Harry Potter movies in a way that did them service, but, to me, didn't do much else. But here, his direction pops, as if everything he learned from the earlier films freed him to do less with special effects—not that he ignores them, in fact there's more magic and imagination in this film than most of the "Potter's" and delightfully so—and concentrate more on telling a story artfully. The cast, especially Redmayne, do great work in the service of the story and everything comes together in a very entertaining package, quibbles aside.

It's a fine expansion of Rowling's wizard's world, and one hopes that the momentum can be sustained in the succeeding films (4 more of them?) to create something truly magical.

* Grindlewald appeared briefly in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, Part 1 and his reveal at the end of Fantastic Beasts...is a little...disappointing.