Pretty Decent Animals and Their Approximate Location

Turkey · December 04, 2016, 08:59:20 AM

Another semi-review. Up front, on everybody's favorite objective rating scale: 4/10. A 7/10 film would be an enjoyable, above-average experience.

Eddie Redmayne portrays a nobody textbook writer from an actually good series of films/movies. He does this by assuming the character, Newt Scamander, is overtly autistic. This isn't a quirky, shy Brit -- it's a guy that fails to make eye contact relentlessly, often leaves the dialog hanging in awkward silence, and has much more affinity for animals than people (and women, especially). He's also mind-blowingly incompetent, and allows his titular beasts to escape on two separate occasions (mostly just to give the plot some momentum, not for any particular story reason), and all of them exist not to be fleshed out or interesting pieces of the universe, but basically as whacky tools for fighting people.

The characters are all pretty bad. You know you're in trouble as a director when your best character relies on a horny-fat-guy cliche, by Dan Fogler. Colin Farrell's character could have been good, but the need to turn him into a """surprise""" villain in the end didn't do him justice, and also replaced the character's actor, inexplicably, to Johnny Depp. I'm sure audiences will just love the tropey "quirky hot woman immediately falls in love with dumb fat guy" plotline.

The plot basically doesn't exist until the last 15 minutes, and it's far and away the worst in the Harry Potter series. Hold on tight for some heavyhanded gay/POC oppression symbolism and a "twist" JKR probably thought was just the bee's knees.

The music is also almost nonexistent, and while I appreciate when movies don't use music as a crutch to tell the audience what to feel (perfectly executed in Arrival, which has no soundtrack barring the intro and outro music), this just superimposed generic adventure music in lieu of iconic Harry Potter music.

Unless you're a HP superfan, you should wait to see this until you're swiping through Redbox on a quiet Tuesday night.

BaconShelf · December 04, 2016, 09:03:03 AM

Yeah, I went to see it the other week and was thoroughly disappointed after hearing naught but praise for it. I can't understand the comments daying it was better than the original films. Still, I wasn't the one paying so no loss to me.

How was Arrival, anyway? Meant to go see it but never actually did. It looked fantastic.

Edit: also wasn't a fan of how the villain (the edgy kid one) was basically just a big cloud. Felt kind of lazy in its design.

Turkey · December 04, 2016, 09:06:49 AM

Quote from: BaconShelf on December 04, 2016, 09:03:03 AM

Yeah, I went to see it the other week and was thoroughly disappointed after hearing naught but praise for it. I can't understand the comments daying it was better than the original films. Still, I wasn't the one paying so no loss to me.

How was Arrival, anyway? Meant to go see it but never actually did. It looked fantastic.

Really great. I don't want to spoil anything, but it's a refreshingly cerebral sci-fi movie.

BaconShelf · December 04, 2016, 09:08:10 AM

Quote from: HubbleTurkeyscope on December 04, 2016, 09:06:49 AM

Quote from: BaconShelf on December 04, 2016, 09:03:03 AM
Yeah, I went to see it the other week and was thoroughly disappointed after hearing naught but praise for it. I can't understand the comments daying it was better than the original films. Still, I wasn't the one paying so no loss to me.

How was Arrival, anyway? Meant to go see it but never actually did. It looked fantastic.

Really great. I don't want to spoil anything, but it's a refreshingly cerebral sci-fi movie.

Gooood. Hoping to go see it with my friend this week.

maverick · December 04, 2016, 10:44:13 AM

10/10 review. I was starting to think I was the only one that didn't really care for it.

And Arrival was really good. Didn't care for the ending but I'd recommend it over Fantastic Beasts and Dr. Strange.

Verbatim · December 04, 2016, 11:37:36 AM

I'd give it a 6/10 for its direction, cinematography, and special effects--I especially enjoy watching household objects getting magicked around, because it makes me wish I had something like that. The CGI characters never looked real, but they were highly expressive and a lot of attention-to-detail was thrown their way. I always appreciate that stuff. Still, I found myself bored during all the action scenes because I just didn't really care that much.

What I hated the most were the characters--the fat horndog was absolutely insufferable, and the most ham-fisted attempt at creating an audience surrogate I've seen in a long time. His love interest--the Legilimens whose name I don't even remember--was also quite irritating to watch, mainly because she can't really act. While I appreciate that she was able to use her womanly charms to get her way without being overtly sexualized, her cutesy demeanor was enough to make me ~~cringe~~ overused verb all throughout her scenes.

The dialogue was also very weird. Since the film takes place in 20th century America, everyone but Newt naturally has an American accent--but the dialogue itself didn't seem very American. While everyone has the accent, they still talk like they're English, and I found this incredibly distracting. Apparently JKR doesn't understand how we talk? Eddie's muttered delivery as Newt certainly didn't help things.

Overall, while this most certainly is the weakest entry in the Harry Potter film canon by far, I think I did end up enjoying it a little bit more than you--if not just for the pretty pictures. I'm a sucker for good, rich, and detailed shots with a lot to swallow, and this film had plenty enough of them for me to warrant a 6/10--and for what it's worth, I thought Eddie Redmayne did a pretty good job with his role. I had never considered that he was autistic until you pointed it out, but even if he is, I wouldn't necessarily consider that a fault. He's clearly meant to be an eccentric fellow, and I thought Redmayne sold that characteristic as well as he needed to.

I'm welcome to having a sequel or two--but the notion that there's going to be five more kinda makes me sick to my stomach.

Turkey · December 04, 2016, 11:46:41 AM

Quote from: Verbatim on December 04, 2016, 11:37:36 AM

I'm welcome to having a sequel or two--but the notion that there's going to be five more kinda makes me sick to my stomach.

Yeah, my concern with this is that the characters in Fantastic Beasts were unlikable and flat. I hope we see a new cast of characters each movie, going through various historical (and future?) events, likely tied together by Gellert Grindelwald (and possibly Dumbledore). I can't really complain about cinematography -- HP has always had a really wonderfully realized world, and I agree that the scenes where magic is used in interesting, non-violent ways are really intriguing. I adored the bank scene, and it's a shame the whole movie wasn't reflective of that. It was really neat seeing competent wizards using magic, unlike in HP where we saw students often struggling to do basic stuff.