I saw the new Harry Potter universe movie over the weekend, and although I’m not a big Harry Potter fan, my wife is, and she was literally asleep next to me in the theater.
The problem with this movie is a lack of consequence. The characters, though likable, are not in any danger for over half the movie. We have crazy creatures running wild in the city, and we gotta catch ’em all, but there is no reason for the viewer to care if the characters succeed or not when the only consequence for failure is us getting to see the creatures smash things and cause havoc.
And that isn’t even a real consequence, because with the wave of a wand all the damage is reversed, leaving us with pointless chase scenes that might as well never have existed after they are over.
What this movie fails to realize is that showing us cute, weird or scary creatures with no purpose, is boring. This is evidenced by an excruciatingly long scene in which we tour the protagonists personal zoo of rare beasts he’s trying to protect. One after the other after the other we are shown creative (though obviously, and almost cartoon-like CG) animals that serve no purpose in the story and have no effect on anything. This entire probably 20 minute scene could have been cut with no loss of continuity and no impact on the story at all.
Later, the characters are unfairly threatened with death and have to escape, and the movie is interesting for a while, but it takes way too long to get to that point, and by then I was just waiting for it to be over.
And when it is over, much like most of the action scenes in the movie, it is all fixed with the wave of a wand and no consequences of anything that happened in the movie remain, leaving me to wonder what the point of making this movie was in the first place.
Flashes of light and color, sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Not recommended, except for the biggest Potter fans.
Jonas David 