Okay, this is a bit better than the last movie in this dire series (yes, I'd love to just not watch them, but I feel compelled to remain a movie completist whenever possible), but that's a very low bar to surpass. Every attempt to wring more money from this world of magic just seems to dilute what made the original stories so great in the first place. The magic no longer feels impressive, it's tiresome. The same goes for the many characters and creatures onscreen. And the plot feels even more like tiresome padding than some very famous prequels I could mention. It doesn't help that Eddie Redmayne plays the main character, Newt Scamander, as if he is trying to hold in a bout of explosive diarrhea. He also has no warmth or charisma, I'm sorry to say, making him the least likeable person in a movie series that is supposed to have him at the front and centre.
The plot is more of the same. Gellert Grindelwald (this time played by Mads Mikkelsen) is making his move to reach a position of great power and start a war between the wizarding world and the muggles. Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law) has assembled a group of people to help throw a spanner in the works. He cannot act himself, mainly due to a blood pact (aka blood troth) the two men made, Dumbledore having acted a bit unwisely because he was in love with Grindelwald. And so it falls to Newt, his brother, Theseus (Callum Turner), 'Lally' Hicks (Jessica Williams), Bunty Broadacre (Newt's assistant, played by Victoria Yeates), Yusuf Kama (William Nadylam), and the brave and loyal, but dragged into the whole situation against his will, Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler) to hopefully put a stop to Grindelwald's scheme. Alongside him, Grindelwald is helped by Queenie Goldstein (Alison Sudol), Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller), and Vinda Rosier (Poppy Corby Tuech), as well as a number of others.
Director David Yates just cannot do enough to bring this series back on track, although he tries his best with the material he's given, written by J. K. Rowling, with Steve Kloves also helping to adapt the storyline into screenplay form. There are certainly some more highlights here than we got in the last film, including a suitcase-utilising, magical, equivalent of "the shell game", a foiled assassination attempt, and even the main plot strand showing Grindelwald putting things and people in place to apparently assure his rise to power. But the stuff that doesn't work feels so much worse because it all feels like padding, and because viewers are saddled with a blockbuster lead character who is possibly the very worst blockbuster lead character in modern cinema. It doesn't help that these films never feel as if they can ever end in a satisfying manner, always just being one chapter in a story that some would prefer was all over by now.
This isn't the "let's bash Eddie Redmayne again and again" hour so I am not going to say any more about him. I think I've made my feelings clear. The rest of the cast generally do good work, especially Mikkelsen, Tuech, and Miller, who are all impressive baddies. Fogler is once again a real highlight, especially when thrown into the middle of magical sequences that have him bravely looking to face off against people who could make him vanish with the flick of a wand, and having him paired up with Williams for what turns out to be the best scene in the film is a great move, especially with Williams also doing such great work. Everyone else is fine, although I do wonder how people were tracking Jude Law's accent, especially as he moves from sounding British to sounding American, and then to sounding like he's just departed from a job gigging with The Wurzels.
What else is there to say? Nothing, not really. The score is enjoyable enough, and full of familiar refrains, the action has plenty of fireworks in almost every scene, there's still not enough balance between the serious tone and the presentation of the material as family entertainment, but it's such a step up from the last instalment that I ended up pleasantly surprised. I won't revisit it, and am not keen to revisit any of these films, but I was actually entertained while it was on. Which is more than I can say about the previous film.
6/10
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