The Potterverse gets bigger
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Where: Cineplex Odeon Victoria, Cineplex Odeon Westshore, Landmark Cinemas University Heights, SilverCity Imax, Star Starring: Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Colin Farrell, Dan Fogler, Ezra Miller, Alison Sudol, Samantha Morton Directed by: David Yates Parental advisory: PG Rating: 3.5 out of 4 stars
As soon as the familiar twinkly score starts up and the eerie blue Warner Brothers logo appears on screen before Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, you’re transported back to that oh-so-familiar magical world spun by the keys of J.K. Rowling.
It feels like plunging into a bath. But it’s definitely not all-toofamiliar — there isn’t a butterbeer or an owl in sight. Fantastic Beasts is Harry Potter with adults, with the added pizzazz of all the salacious trappings of 1926 Jazz Age New York to spice up the style.
Our hero is a tousle-haired, stoop-shouldered ginger from the fair isle of Britain, Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne). He arrives in New York City the way many of the immigrants who made America great did, through Ellis Island.
But the one shady thing he smuggles through customs is a battered suitcase that growls, hisses and rattles. Those would be the fantastic beasts with which the film is concerned — they’re outlawed in the U.S. magical world, which is strictly kept secret from the No-Majs (a.k.a. Muggles).
But Newt is a gentle soul, a caretaker and free-thinker who believes in the power and good of all creatures treated with respect and love. He’s in New York only a few minutes before he happens upon an anti-witch doomsday cult preaching of a Second Salem and loses several of his beasts.
The roundup of the animals allows for Newt to convince skeptical Magical Congress auror Tina (Katherine Waterston) of the creatures’ usefulness just in time to battle a monstrous and deadly force wreaking havoc on the cobblestone streets, threatening the wizards’ cover.
Potter helmer David Yates once again takes the reins on Beasts and he spins darkly gorgeous, equally divine and grotesque images imbued with Prohibition-era old-fashioned flapper glamour. The film is a marvel to behold, even when it descends into the very 2016 trend of destroying a major city with an apocalyptic dust cloud (see: Suicide Squad, X-Men: Apocalypse, et al). Beasts plunges us into this fresh magical world populated by actual grown-ups — gangsters, babes and bakers — and this extra edge of sexy urban grime proves to be an intoxicating addition to the Potterverse. You’ll immediately crave more, and the world Rowling creates is both richly rendered and just the tip of the iceberg.
Redmayne is bashfully charming as Newt, giving a typically excellent physical performance as a shy man more comfortable around creatures than humans. He’s balanced by Dan Fogler as Kowalski, his jovial local No-Maj pal, Waterston as the Hepburnesque gal with moxie, and an ethereal Alison Sudol as Tina’s sensual sister, Queenie.
The rest of the cast features scene-stealers Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton and Ezra Miller as the most complicated creatures of all.
Fantastic Beasts is transporting, but its themes are far from escapist. It’s a film about immigrants who might seem foreign, with different values and ideas, but who just might save us from ourselves.
It’s about the power of whispering rather than shouting; tenderness and love erasing violence and terror. It’s about embracing, not suppressing, one’s unique qualities — in order to hone them into talent and skill.
Newt Scamander is indeed the hero who we need right now, and Rowling is the storyteller we need now more than ever.