Review of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018) by Dawdlingpoet — 22 Nov 2021

This follow up film features plenty of decent special effects and lots of CGI creatures, as was the case in the original film. I particularly enjoyed the choreographed scenes.

The plot is a bit confusing, which didn't entirely surprise me given its a 'wizarding world' (i.e. Harry Potter universe) film and I've never been interested in Harry Potter but I watched it as I enjoyed the first 'Fantastic Beasts' film when I saw it on TV and I also enjoyed this follow up. There's a decent cast present, with Jude Law and Johnny Depp among them, plus of course Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander. I enjoyed his performance and found it a quite watchable and indeed entertaining film, even though I can't say I fully followed the ins and outs of every plot aspect but that doesn't always entirely matter. From what I've seen, a lot of people weren't much impressed with this film due to the plot being a bit scatter-brained. This didn't overly bother me, as I say and I did enjoy the special effects, although sometimes its more of an issue, such as with full out action films, if the main plot seems utterly implausible then it can put me off the whole film, though I really enjoyed watching this film. It's a nice enough form of escapism and so I'd recommend it for that purpose, although I'm not sure I'd say its better than the first film, its certainly not bad at all. Its surprisingly engrossing really and the CGI creatures have a real charm to them, so I felt, its just not a film to overly analyse or take especially seriously I suppose. I certainly enjoyed it more than I didn't.