"Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald" review

Never before have I been more starkly aware of the difference between enchanting and diverting.




JK Rowling’s Wizarding World, from its first entry in literary form to its final film adaptation of its final published novel, has always been so ripe for expansion and side story exploration, it’s almost criminal that it took nearly a decade past the release of the final film for it to happen in any capacity.

I only wish that the adventures of Newt Scamander in an early twentieth century world of magic could manage even a fraction of the resonance behind “Harry Potter’s” coming of age tale.

Sequel to 2016’s well meaning and well conceived but ultimately underwhelming “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” “The Crimes of Grindelwald,” in true Post-cinematic Universe age Warner Bros. fashion, manages to assemble an almost Sony-esque clunker of a tale exploring themes of xenophobia and the contradictory view that hold something as other can be inherently equal despite the fundamental status of being kept separate, spared from being worthy purely of outright dismissal by the clearly unabashed levels of sincerity that are noticeable in the final product.

It can’t be understated how much that sincerity really is the sole saving grace of the movie. Rowling’s growing but nevertheless lacking understanding of what writing should be prioritized for what it lends to cinematic language still carries a bold tale of the dangers of past transgressions and the tragically cyclical nature of history’s repetition, here literalized by being a period piece that almost seems to invoke an air of real life xenophobia bubbling back up in society today.

Unfortunately, the minutia of world building and character connections is the name of the game and try as David Yates might, he just can’t make a feature that rises but so far over the cumbersome family politics harkening back to supplemental references of the original “Harry Potter” books and the pragmatic but clumsy abandonment of story concepts clearly set in motion before there was a cohesive idea of what this story was supposed to be.

Despite being only the second entry of its storyline, a good portion of “The Crimes of Grindelwald” almost feels like a cliffhanging season finale to show that’s been airing for at least a few seasons.

The interplay between characters is far too dense and self-serious, building off of only passing blurbs of information from previous entries as opposed to developed stories that have played out on screen already.

Watching Newt stumble between something of an implied love triangle between his childhood crush and Tina Goldstein is actually executed with a fair amount of charming performances, thanks in main part to the chemistry of the cast but when the aforementioned crush, Leta Lestrange, played by Zoë Kravitz, in question was relegated to a single cameo lasting a few seconds in the previous film, watching the whole stupid sitcom-esque misunderstanding play out just feels hollow.

That level of artificially founded character building that plagues the movie is a rough pill to swallow and that’s before getting into the blatant mechanical alterations made to the story in order to allow this to exist.

While Dan Fogler and Alison Sudol reprise their roles as Jacob and Queenie respectively and are still among the most charming element of the story, the movie’s decision to circumvent the narrative gymnastics necessary to involve them in the story in the first place by almost hand waving away the best aspects of the last film’s ending is flat out cheap, and cheapened even further by the almost nonsensical conclusion they arrive at in this one.

All of this is to say nothing of the series of mysteries and conflicts that overstuff this feature forming the backbone of a scattershot plot that not only fails to resolve any of them but after a certain point starts to make you flat out not care about them, from the major reveal behind Credence’s (reprised by Ezra Miller) true nature to the increasingly asinine cop out of Dumbledore’s nonexistent sexuality, contradictory to what the series scribe’s publicizing would want the audience to believe.

I understand that all of this must sound infuriatingly negative and that’s because from a storytelling standpoint, this movie just flat out falls apart.

From a filmmaking standpoint however, the technical spectacle does at least succeed where the series seemed to be failing up to this point. The action, presentation, and overall aesthetic of the Wizarding World is portrayed with an undeniably gripping level of visual cleverness that keeps things consistently engaging even when the characters aren’t up to the task of doing so.

To that end, the movie is also admittedly more cohesive than the first, a fantastical neo noir-like period appropriate musical score driving a darker and more consistent tone that better blends the nature of the story with its spectacle driven subject matter. There’s obviously a far more transparent vision of where this story is going hear than their ever was in “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.” What hurts most about that is that “The Crimes of Grindelwald” is a noticeable improvement over its predecessor but just not up to the pedigree of nearly everyone involved in it.

There are way too many storytelling faux pas done at the hands of people that should have known better to really give it any sort of pass but if you’re a “Harry Potter” fan that loves being immersed in the creativity of the setting, “The Crimes of Grindelwald” does at least not fail as a passable 2 hour diversion.

5 Phoenix Flames out of 10