The Reel Review
A more apt title would be Fantastic CGI in Search of A Story. JK Rowling follows her wildly successful Harry Potter franchise with her screenwriting debut about Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), a former Hogwarts student whom is a wizard and wrangler of magical creatures. Set in New York about 70 years prior to the Potter anthology, it is loaded with a mind-numbing amount of special effects and a Pokémon Go-like cavalcade of quirky critters, but it still isn’t enough to overcome a completely bland, formulaic, forgettable story. Redmayne is solid in the lead role, and there are a handful of cute moments, but this film has only two real target audiences – small children dazzled by CGI eye candy and the most manic Potter superfans. For the rest of us, it is fantastically boring.
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