Fantastic Beasts - Crimes of Grindelwald

[zico]

3/10. Another Harry Potter prequel, best seen on a big screen, and best seen by Harry Potter history buffs.

Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) is a bad wizard who escapes from prison at the very start of the film. After that, various wizards and witches go off and plod about at various locations in London, England and Paris, France to go and find some young wizard (not Harry Potter) who is very important, and they also decide whether they are going to choose the Dark Side, the Light Side or stay neutral like a magical Switzerland. We also see a few Fantastic Beasts along the way, but there aren't that many crimes committed by Grindelwald. The film optimistically assumes we'll know all about these characters from watching and remembering in great detail everything from the first Fantastic Beasts film which was a few years ago, but for those not in the know, they finally get round to explaining who's who in the last 10 minutes of the film. Eddie Redmayne "stars", wearing a faintly bemused expression for most of the film, as if he too has forgotten who all these characters are. The last 10 minutes is quite good, with some Nazi references and parallels, but there are 2 hours of dull stuff before the final bit.

For diversity, there's an oriental lady who is onscreen quite a lot, but only gets about 2 lines of dialogue and has to look either anxious or scared in every scene.

The 2 questions about this film are "who are all these people?" and "why should I care what happens to them?". I found it hard to care about either question.

Apparently there are another 3 of these films in the pipeline. At least the visuals are good.