J.K. Rowling unleashes 'Beasts'

This prequel to the Harry Potter series isn't as fantastic as one might have hoped.

The box-office numbers for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them probably will be big. If ever there was a time when the country was primed for fantasy, this is it.

Wait. I take that back. When it comes to movies, our escape-hungry country always seems primed for fantasy.

So here comes J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame to hook us into another series of movies designed to transport us into a world of wands and wizards.

Rowling's new series -- yes, two more are in the offing -- takes place in 1926, long before Harry Potter was even born -- much less learning his trade at Hogwarts.

This prequel to the Harry Potter series follows the adventures of Newt Scamander, a wizard who's writing what will become one of Hogwarts standard texts.

Early on, Scamander heads to the US as part of his plan to save and preserve magical creatures of which you will see many.

But here -- as I see it -- is the rub: The movie is only half successful.

Fantastic Beasts, which stars Eddie Redmayne as Scamander, is rich in set design and special effects. The movie's faux but nonetheless impressive atmospherics evoke the sooty streets of Manhattan during the 1920s.

But Beasts is poor, perhaps even impoverished, when it comes to character development and propulsive storytelling.

For some, the movie's visual abundance will be sufficient reward. Strip away a strong dose of Potter affection, though, and what you're left with is a big, muddled movie in which Redmayne shuffles his way toward the next two movies.

Redmayne imbues the main character with a diffidence that makes you wonder whether the actor -- despite tousled hair and just the right look -- was fully able to connect with an ill-defined role.

As one expects, Rowling fills the screenplay with jargon. The American version of Muggles, for example, are called No-Majs (no magics), sadly deficient humans who simply get on with their lives.

Despite the movie's wizardly bias against normal folks, Scamander is open to keeping human company; he even acquires a human sidekick (Dan Folger), a portly, good-natured factory worker and aspiring baker who becomes involved in the story through a baggage mix-up.

Meanwhile, a supposedly do-gooder group led by Mary Lou Barebone (Samantha Morton) presents opposition to witches; an evil Wizard, Geller Grindelwald, looms; and Manhattan is ravaged by a mysterious, fog-like dark force that reduces buildings to rubble.

The rest of the cast includes Katharine Waterston, as Tina Goldstein, a wizard who's on the outs with the American magic establishments; Alison Sudol as Tina's sister Queenie, a strawberry blond who reads minds; Colin Farrell) as Percival Graves, an American wizard whose motives are obviously suspect.

Have I mentioned Credence (Ezra Miller), a mope of a young man who as been adopted by Mary Lou and who skulks his way through the movie?

Part Dickensian tale about a cruel woman who adopts children for her own purposes, part cartoonish display of creatures too numerous to count and part guide to the way the magical world functions on US shores, Fantastic Beasts struck me as an often charmless addition to the Rowling oeuvre. She wrote the screenplay.

Some of the creatures -- a kleptomaniacal Niffler that looks like a platypus and a reedy Bowtruckle that Scamander keeps in his jacket pocket -- provide fun, perhaps to mitigate the impact the movie's scarier creatures might have on younger children.

James Newton Howard's musical score works to make the movie seem more enchanted than director David Yates can make it.

Absent the built-in affection that helped carry the Harry Potter movies past their rough spots, Fantastic Beasts ultimately must stand on its own.

Sequels will follow. Let's hope that they're more engaging than this over-stuffed first edition. Consuming it, left me with a bad case of fantasy indigestion.

Harry Potter's long march toward a finale

If you're a fan, you probably think 2 hours and 26 minutes of Deathly Hallows is just right. The rest of us would have preferred a little pruning.

The curtain finally has begun to fall on the Harry Potter series, drawing a dark veil over the story of the young wizard. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 has a forbidding feel that settles over the story like an ominous fog.

But (with me there's usually a but) there's only so much time one productively can wander in a fog. The next-to-the-last Potter movie - J. K. Rowling's final Potter book has been broken into two parts for the screen -- amounts to an awfully long build-up to a finale that's bound to surpass it, if only because it will once and for all settle the battle between Harry and the evil Lord Voldemort.

This 2-hour and 26 minute helping of Harry interruptus features action, dry stretches and nuances that probably will elude those who haven't immersed themselves in the books. Of course, Potter enthusiasts are so many in number, they have made the series the most financially lucrative in movie history, and probably don't give a hoot what the rest of us think.

Say this, the Potter movies have provided a well-deserved payday for some brilliant actors. The opening scenes of this edition benefit from the presence of Bill Nighy (as Rufus Scrimgeour, Minister of Magic) and Brendan Gleeson (as Alastor Mad-Eye Moody), two actors who can't be overwhelmed by the abundant if slightly repetitive special effects that director David Yates applies to the proceedings.

Is it me or did the numerous wand fights in this edition bear an unfortunate resemblance to old-fashioned gunfights?

The movie opens in a climate of fear and apprehension. Dealing from a position of strength, Lord Voldemort and his army of Death Eaters are on the verge of triumph. Can they be stopped? Will Harry find the Horcruxes? Has anyone got a glossary?

Yes, there are amazing scenes. An early-picture meeting at Voldemort's retreat plays like a board meeting presided over by an abusive chairman, and gives Ralph Fiennes, as Voldemort, a little noseless face time. A late-picture bit of animation - the crucial Tale of the Three Brothers - ranks among the finest set pieces of the entire series. The use of Nick Cave's song, O Children, allows Harry and Hermione to share a moment of dance.

The trio that has carried the series deserves our appreciation. Daniel Radcliffe makes a convincing Harry even now that he's beginning to show traces of five o'clock shadow. Rupert Grint retains the spark that makes Ron Weasley appealling, although his character has begun to vent jealousies about what he perceives as a developing romance between Harry and Hermione. And Emma Watson has grown into a Hermione whose girlish steadfastness has begun to show signs of womanly assertiveness.

Relations among the trio hit a rough patch in an overly long segment in which Harry, Hermione and Ron wander through dense forests or camp on a rocky cliff in a tent that looks small from the outside, but expands once its inhabitants have entered. Why not? This is, after all, a J.K. Rowling universe. Magic rules.

Reaction to Hallows may boil down to whether one is a zealous fan who regards Rowling's work as holy writ. If you are one of those, you may lament some of screenwriter Steven Kloves' excisions. Kloves does, however, weave in emotionally charged plot business involving two elves, Kreacher and Dobby, as well as enough plot currents to breed exhaustion in readers were I to make an attempt to recount them. All I'll say is that I would have welcomed more pruning.

My wife told me she overhead a telling comment in the women's restroom after the preview screening. "At the rate this was going, I thought we'd be here until midnight," said a woman who evidently knew precisely how much of the story was still to come and who must have momentarily forgotten that Warner Bros. had opted to split Rowling's final Potter book in two.
Another friend said he found this edition to be action-packed, a description that did not jibe with my impression.I felt the gathering of forces that should lead to a smashing finale, but too often thought the movie was dragging its feet.

For that finale, we must wait until next summer, when - as another fan assured me - we'll see the payoff of much of what transpired in Part 1. I hope she's right. Although it's well crafted, I couldn't shake the sense that Hallows, Part I is -- at least a little -- the cinematic equivalent of spending 40 years in the desert without reaching the Promised Land.

I left the theater trying to sort out some of the movie' s many details, cataloging the parts of the movie I found impressive and harboring one overriding thought, "For heaven's sake, let's get on with it."