Film Review - Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore

*Introducing Film Reviews from Morristown Minute's Editor - 

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022) ★★

“Professor Albus Dumbledore knows the powerful, dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald is moving to seize control of the wizarding world. Unable to stop him alone, he entrusts magi-zoologist Newt Scamander to lead an intrepid team of wizards and witches. They soon encounter an array of old and new beasts as they clash with Grindelwald's growing legion of followers.”

Rewatched Jun 03, 2022

We don’t learn anything new –

Dumbledore didn’t have as many secrets as we thought.

What little progress the plot makes seems inconsequential to the canon.

It’s a mess from the start. Depp’s name hangs over the whole movie, but the story/camera won’t go through much effort to remind the audience of the casting change - they don’t need to.

A good story redeems all wrongs, but there will be no redemption here.

My advice, give the ensemble of characters a rest, the formula has been played out, and yet every character is still loveable. The next movie should expand the cinematic universe, that’s what was so great about the Harry Potter series. A small group of three (3) loveable characters in an ever-expanding universe.

The Fantastic Beast film series “universe” has refused to expand much since the first movie, and no film to follow will deserve any audience attention out of this environment of ubiquitous media unless it expands on the admittedly fascinating universe of the wizarding world.

But I watched all two hours and twenty-three minutes of it.

Find it on HBO Max, since May 30, 2022.