Missing real magic
FANTASTIC BEASTS: THE SECRETS OF DUMBLEDORE
Cert 12A ★★★ In cinemas now
THIS may be far from fantastic but at least JK Rowling’s third Harry Potter prequel is a lot better than the last one. If you can’t remember the others (and four years is a long gap), you’ll need a quick refresher.
Set decades before Daniel Radcliffe first boarded the Hogwarts Express, Fantastic Beasts’ grown-up hero is Eddie Redmayne’s charisma-lite “magizoologist” Newt Scamander.
The first film mostly showed him wandering 1920s New York collecting magical, merchandisable creatures and secreting them in his Tardis-like suitcase.
In the second one, he found himself bogged down in soapy subplots and drawn into a spat between a middle-aged (and now openly gay) Dumbledore ( Jude Law) and his evil wizard ex, Grindelwald ( Johnny Depp).
Now we’re in the 1930s and the fallout has taken a sinister turn.
With fascism on the rise, Grindelwald (Mads Mikkelsen replacing the cancelled Depp) plans to hijack an election and become the Muggle-exterminating leader of the magical world.
As Dumbledore can’t go wand-to-wand with Grindelwald (they made a magical non-aggression pact when they were young
lovers), he has to scheme from the sidelines while Newt, Newt’s brother Theseus (Callum Turner), witch Eulalie Hicks ( Jessica Williams) and Muggle baker Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler) head to Berlin to sabotage his campaign.
The resulting action scenes are thrillingly staged but lack the connective tissue usually provided by a professional screenwriter. This instalment also benefits from fewer subplots and less screen time for Redmayne’s bumbling hero, who turns out to be far less irritating in smaller doses.
Law’s Dumbledore is a far more acceptable hero, but I found myself distracted by his sporadic and completely unwarranted West Country burr. It’s like he keeps getting possessed by a Wurzel.
Jude Law’s Dumbledore is a far more acceptable hero than Redmayne