Spoiler-Free Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Review Roundup: Is the Movie as Magical as Harry Potter?

Long before Harry Potter, there was Newt Scamander.
In Warner Bros.' Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (in theaters Friday), Eddie Redmayne stars as Newt, a magizoologist who loses a briefcase full of magical creatures in New York City. The film, set in 1926, co-stars Carmen Ejogo as Seraphina Picquery, Colin Farrell as Percival Graves, Dan Fogler as Jacob Kowalski, Ezra Miller as Credence Barebone, Alison Sudol as Queenie Goldstein, Jon Voight as Henry Shaw, Sr. and Katherine Waterston as Tina Goldstein.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is rated PG-13.
Here is what critics are saying about the movie:

• "Fantastic Beasts is basically a Harry Potter prequel (though you'll get a detention for saying that). J.K. Rowling, writing her first film script, and longtime Harry Potter director David Yates have created an entirely new corner of the wizarding world. They strike a savvy balance between shiny new elements and recognizable ones for Potterheads," Time Out London's Cathe Clarke writes. "There are not quite enough thrills in Fantastic Beasts to keep you always on the edge of your seat, and no film-stealing baddie to dig your teeth into—but then, Voldemort didn't make a proper appearance until Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire."

 

• "Fantastic Beasts is a rich, baroque, intricately detailed entertainment with some breathtaking digital fabrications of prewar New York City," The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw writes, praising the film's "Steampunk 2.0" vibe. "It's a very Rowling universe, dense with fun, but always taking its own jeopardy very seriously and effortlessly making you do the same. The Beasts movies may actually make clearer Rowling's under-discussed debt to Roald Dahl. They also show that her universe with its exotic fauna is in the best way, a cousin to that of George Lucas."

• "Maintaining Yates as director lends a consistency to the project, and yet, it would have been refreshing to get a completely new take on Rowling's world with this series, especially considering how murky and self-serious they got in the final chapters," Variety's Peter Debruge writes. "Still, Yates knows this world as well as anyone, and he excels at finding visual solutions for challenging ideas...With all its ties to Harry Potter arcana, Fantastic Beasts has clearly been designed for the most devoted of Rowling's fans, and though it may prove confusing to newcomers, the faithful will appreciate the fact the film never talks down to its audience."

• "What really disappoints is that where Harry Potter and his films felt entirely original, there's a 'franchise-y' feel to Fantastic Beasts. It has the now-predictable rhythms of a Marvel origins movie — New York again gets destroyed in a climactic barrage of special effects; the Blind Pig speakeasy even seems modeled on the Star Wars cantina—and less of the eccentric, innocent, English charms of Harry and his little chums and their battles," The Wrap's Jason Solomons writes. "Something more is needed, a bit more wit, perhaps, or dare I say it, some sexual tension." Even so, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them "has all the makings of a huge family blockbuster, but all the bloated traps of those, too. It hasn't quite got the balance right, but, like the title hints, surely knows where to find the magic formula over the ensuing movies."

• "The film...unspools like a kiddie version of the X-Men flicks. The xenophobic Muggle population (or No-Majs, as they're called Stateside) live in rabid suspicion of the hidden world of hocus-pocus. And like those films, its phantasmagorical special effects are easy on the eyes. So why does Fantastic Beasts feel so oddly lifeless? Why doesn't it cast more of a spell? First, there are the performances, which aside from Redmayne's are surprisingly flat. And second, the thinness of the source material gives the whole film a slightly padded feeling," Entertainment Weekly's Chris Nashawaty writes. "Fantastic Beasts is two-plus hours of meandering eye candy that feels numbingly inconsequential...For a movie stuffed with so many weird and wondrous creatures, there isn't nearly enough magic." While the eight Harry Potter films were huge hits for Warner Bros., "If it plans on replicating Potter's success, its sequels will have to step it up."

• "Likely to draw in just about everyone who followed the Potter series and to please most of them, the picture also has things to offer for fantasy-friendly moviegoers who only casually observed that phenomenon. The latter group, however, may be less convinced that this spinoff demands the five feature-length installments Warner Bros. and Rowling have planned," The Hollywood Reporter's John DeFore writes. As for Redmayne and the rest of the cast? "Whether or not the ensemble chemistry ever clicks to the extent it did for Harry, Hermione and Ron, Rowling clearly has an endless supply of lore left to share with those invested in her world."

• "The movie could have used more of that wholesome, gee-whiz sense of wonder and a bit less exposition. Rowling's own source material, a 2001 booklet, is a mere 128 pages long—there's no need to stretch it out to a 132-minute epic stocked with five endings," Us Weekly's Mara Reinstein writes. "It will be interesting to see how Rowling can stretch out this franchise."