Or better yet. Fantastic Beasts and how to excel at boredom. We live in a world where everything needs a prequel. It makes me sad. Harry Potter loyalists are going to swear by this movie. They're going to tell you that this is the second coming of a franchise that died with the last Potter film. They have the right to that opinion and they can also choose to stay true to their worship of Rowling. But they'd be lying by trying to convince you that this is a good movie by any stretch of the imagination. There's a huge difference between the previous J.K. Rowling movies and this. The boy wizard films had heart. This does not. Fantastic Beasts is a bloated, near story less mess that lacks imagination, soul, and any real purpose other than getting you to pay an extra 5 bucks for some pretty looking 3D. There's too many creatures, too much confusion, and way too many missed opportunities to count. With a good cast like this there should be something enjoyable for a casual movie goer. Simply put, there is not. Our main actors are awkward and don't even seem to be happy about their big payday film.
The new Planet of the Apes series has proven that studios can create animals that look like they exist in the same space as the actors. Here, CGI takes ten steps back with painfully bad looking design and lack of attention to dimensional details.
Bumbling about through an annoying runtime that clocks in over two hours, this new re-entry into a world of magic has none of the qualities that fans will be looking for. Again, it'll be easy for them to defend this atrocious spectacle of CGI just because of their dedication to Potter. But this is seriously a vicious retread of other novel to film translations like The Golden Compass or other blundered failures. Will it make money? Yes. But is it any good? Absolutely not.
Bumbling about through an annoying runtime that clocks in over two hours, this new re-entry into a world of magic has none of the qualities that fans will be looking for. Again, it'll be easy for them to defend this atrocious spectacle of CGI just because of their dedication to Potter. But this is seriously a vicious retread of other novel to film translations like The Golden Compass or other blundered failures. Will it make money? Yes. But is it any good? Absolutely not.
A good franchise movie should be able to sell it to a non-fan. It should have enough quality story values to make someone that's never read the books believe in these magical dimensions and evil doing bad guys. Fantastic Beasts is the absolute opposite. In all honesty, this couldn't end soon enough. With Colin Farrell doing his a-typical cold as ice villain and Eddie Redmayne still pouting like a little bitch, I would honestly call this one of the worst movies of 2016 and a painful reminder of how bad CGI can drag a movie down. This is a squandered opportunity to give families something to enjoy together during the holiday movie season.
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| This box contains the most magical weed ever! |
The Potter militia will be out in full force trying to use their magical wands to cast a spell on me for this review. But, they'd be fooling themselves if they claim this is a good introduction to what is sure to be a prequel series/franchise. The first act drags on and on while characters are thrown at us with no backstory and little time to decide who's who. Fantastic Beasts is just another movie about a mystical creature on the loose in the big city as a team of wizards try to protect our fate. Yay. Been here a million times. I don't ever need to be here again. Make the pain stop. Please.
You may disagree and say this is great fantasy. The only thing fantastical for me was leaving the theater. My boredom peaked to the highest levels it's seen this year. I should have seen the Million Dollar Baby remake, Bleed For This instead.
Score:
Share the pain. Share the suffering.
Score:
-CG