Yes, you read that right - and I never have nightmares. I tried to approach this movie with an open mindset, but grew from mild boredom to disgust to eventual active hatred for the movie which I couldn't wait to end, but as a stubborn completionist still refused to stop watching until the credits rolled. A night full of nightmares that followed was just a final FU from the movie which must be one of the worst movie experiences I have had in years.
But let's start with the good stuff. The setting of the New York of the roaring 1920s looks gorgeous and art direction is top notch. The Polish baker side character is heartwarming and lovable and really someone to root for. Ezra Miller is great as the suppressed freak (even though he telegraphs the "twist" of the movie from a mile away). The character design of the fantastic beasts is imaginative and varied.
Unfortunately that was about it for what I liked about the movie and now the nightmare-inducing stuff. As I spent the rest of the night seeing constant nuclear detonations going off on the horizon in my sleep and the resulting shockwaves obliterating buildings and people, apparently the endless demolitions of walls and houses going on in the movie were just too much for me. As good as the recreated New York of a 100 years ago looked on-screen, the setting itself felt inappropriate as well considering that the whole Harry Potter legacy is essentially a quintessential British thing. Bringing it over to the US felt like trying to please an overseas audience just to milk additional money, but instead of bolstering the brand, it flees like it is diluting it.
Even though I loved Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking in "The Theory of Everything", his portrayal of a similarly shuffling and nervously blinking weirdo was completely out of place here and grew tired very quickly. Unlike Hawking though, his character was also rubbish at what he was supposed to be good at in this movie. Not only was he kicked out of Hogwarts, so must have been a rubbish wizard-to-be, he was also absolutely inept at controlling his beasts, thus being a useless zoo-keeper as well. Telling each consecutive unruly beast a ridiculous "Mommy is here!" when approaching does not make one a competent beastmaster.
But by far the absolute most ridiculous scene of the whole movie was when Eddie (I don't care much for his character name, which sounds like cross between Isaac Newton and the James Bond villain Scaramanga) approaches an overgrown rhino of sorts with a "he's in heat, he needs to mate" and then proceeds to bend over and show the beast his bum while making strange snorting sounds and convoluted faces - presumably in order to induce the beast in heat to mount him from behind? I just couldn't believe what I was seeing and how through the arduous process of bringing a movie to screen nobody was sane enough to say "enough of this, we're not doing it". Countless people greenlighted a scene of implied beastiality and zoophilia fit to be shown in a children's movie. Seriously - WTH?
And what was that bit with Dumbledore being very fond of Eddie, which Colin Farrell said during Eddie's interrogation? Since we now know that Dumbledore was gay and seeing how inept and uncomfortable the protagonist was with his female "love interest" in this movie - was that a hint at an illicit former relationship between a teacher and a student?
Speaking of which, was I the only one who felt a more than strange vibe going on in the secret back-alley meetings between Colin Farrell's head investigator of sorts (an older man) and Ezra Miller's nerdy freak (a younger boy)? All that submissive shivering and sense of shame from the younger passive participant and the cuddling, touching and encouragement mixed with constantly growing pressure from the older active participant? Is it still a children's movie I am watching?
As I already mentioned, Ezra Miller is fascinating to watch on-screen, but anyone who has seen "Carrie" or even read about any bullied kid taking a gun to school to execute a massacre saw the twist coming from a mile away. Neither was any of it very clear - where'd he come from? What did he want? What did Colin Farrell want from him? Why was Eddie Redmayne carrying a clearly very dangerous similar black blob around in his suitcase? Is it all supposed to be revealed in the next movie?
Aside from Ezra Miller and the Polish baker, the other characters in this movie didn't add anything positive to the movie either. The protagonist's pseudo love-interest, the bumbling magical detective served as a cutesy diversion and nothing else. Her nauseatingly over-sexed sister was just an offensive caricature of a flirtatious woman. The president of MACUSA was there only for the filmmakers to be able to check off "inclusive diversity". The rest of MACUSA looked like a bunch Gestapo agents. Johnny Depp popped out of nowhere (yes, I understand that he was Colin Farrell all along, but it was still ridiculous).
For a supposedly children's movie, maybe the most jarring moment was the summary execution sentence of the protagonists after a two-minute non-trial by Colin Farrell, which the MACUSA seemed to be more than willing to carry out just like that within seconds. Based on that alone, it is clearly an absolutely criminal organization, so maybe the whole Gestapo feel was not so wrong after all - but all of that was forgotten by the end of the movie, when somehow the MACUSA were still the good guys?
And finally, even though imaginative, I did not find most of the namesake fantastical creatures lovable at all. The kleptomaniac mole we are first introduced to and kept pilfering anything shiny throughout the movie was annoying to the point of me wanting to step into the movie and splatter it with a spade myself. When we were introduced to the zoo that lived in the protagonist's suitcase and are paraded an endless stream of beasts, all I could think of was - what this movie really needs is good dose of Space Marines from the movie "Aliens" to come and mop up this ungodly mess of freaks and monsters. Seriously - I find nothing cutesy or lovable about Predator, Facehugger, Alien Queen or those gigantic brain-sucking bugs from "Starship Troopers", the flashier versions of which this movie essentially presented us with to "love". Their only purpose for existence in those other movies is to get torched by Ripley or carpet-bombed to smithereen by battleships in orbit but unfortunately none of that happened in this movie.
Not only have I lost two hours watching the movie, followed by a night of nightmares, but now spent an additional hour writing a review here on IMDB so it is probably time to cut my losses but I felt I just had to add my contrarian view to balance what seems like an completely unwarranted positive reception to this mess of a movie.
But let's start with the good stuff. The setting of the New York of the roaring 1920s looks gorgeous and art direction is top notch. The Polish baker side character is heartwarming and lovable and really someone to root for. Ezra Miller is great as the suppressed freak (even though he telegraphs the "twist" of the movie from a mile away). The character design of the fantastic beasts is imaginative and varied.
Unfortunately that was about it for what I liked about the movie and now the nightmare-inducing stuff. As I spent the rest of the night seeing constant nuclear detonations going off on the horizon in my sleep and the resulting shockwaves obliterating buildings and people, apparently the endless demolitions of walls and houses going on in the movie were just too much for me. As good as the recreated New York of a 100 years ago looked on-screen, the setting itself felt inappropriate as well considering that the whole Harry Potter legacy is essentially a quintessential British thing. Bringing it over to the US felt like trying to please an overseas audience just to milk additional money, but instead of bolstering the brand, it flees like it is diluting it.
Even though I loved Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking in "The Theory of Everything", his portrayal of a similarly shuffling and nervously blinking weirdo was completely out of place here and grew tired very quickly. Unlike Hawking though, his character was also rubbish at what he was supposed to be good at in this movie. Not only was he kicked out of Hogwarts, so must have been a rubbish wizard-to-be, he was also absolutely inept at controlling his beasts, thus being a useless zoo-keeper as well. Telling each consecutive unruly beast a ridiculous "Mommy is here!" when approaching does not make one a competent beastmaster.
But by far the absolute most ridiculous scene of the whole movie was when Eddie (I don't care much for his character name, which sounds like cross between Isaac Newton and the James Bond villain Scaramanga) approaches an overgrown rhino of sorts with a "he's in heat, he needs to mate" and then proceeds to bend over and show the beast his bum while making strange snorting sounds and convoluted faces - presumably in order to induce the beast in heat to mount him from behind? I just couldn't believe what I was seeing and how through the arduous process of bringing a movie to screen nobody was sane enough to say "enough of this, we're not doing it". Countless people greenlighted a scene of implied beastiality and zoophilia fit to be shown in a children's movie. Seriously - WTH?
And what was that bit with Dumbledore being very fond of Eddie, which Colin Farrell said during Eddie's interrogation? Since we now know that Dumbledore was gay and seeing how inept and uncomfortable the protagonist was with his female "love interest" in this movie - was that a hint at an illicit former relationship between a teacher and a student?
Speaking of which, was I the only one who felt a more than strange vibe going on in the secret back-alley meetings between Colin Farrell's head investigator of sorts (an older man) and Ezra Miller's nerdy freak (a younger boy)? All that submissive shivering and sense of shame from the younger passive participant and the cuddling, touching and encouragement mixed with constantly growing pressure from the older active participant? Is it still a children's movie I am watching?
As I already mentioned, Ezra Miller is fascinating to watch on-screen, but anyone who has seen "Carrie" or even read about any bullied kid taking a gun to school to execute a massacre saw the twist coming from a mile away. Neither was any of it very clear - where'd he come from? What did he want? What did Colin Farrell want from him? Why was Eddie Redmayne carrying a clearly very dangerous similar black blob around in his suitcase? Is it all supposed to be revealed in the next movie?
Aside from Ezra Miller and the Polish baker, the other characters in this movie didn't add anything positive to the movie either. The protagonist's pseudo love-interest, the bumbling magical detective served as a cutesy diversion and nothing else. Her nauseatingly over-sexed sister was just an offensive caricature of a flirtatious woman. The president of MACUSA was there only for the filmmakers to be able to check off "inclusive diversity". The rest of MACUSA looked like a bunch Gestapo agents. Johnny Depp popped out of nowhere (yes, I understand that he was Colin Farrell all along, but it was still ridiculous).
For a supposedly children's movie, maybe the most jarring moment was the summary execution sentence of the protagonists after a two-minute non-trial by Colin Farrell, which the MACUSA seemed to be more than willing to carry out just like that within seconds. Based on that alone, it is clearly an absolutely criminal organization, so maybe the whole Gestapo feel was not so wrong after all - but all of that was forgotten by the end of the movie, when somehow the MACUSA were still the good guys?
And finally, even though imaginative, I did not find most of the namesake fantastical creatures lovable at all. The kleptomaniac mole we are first introduced to and kept pilfering anything shiny throughout the movie was annoying to the point of me wanting to step into the movie and splatter it with a spade myself. When we were introduced to the zoo that lived in the protagonist's suitcase and are paraded an endless stream of beasts, all I could think of was - what this movie really needs is good dose of Space Marines from the movie "Aliens" to come and mop up this ungodly mess of freaks and monsters. Seriously - I find nothing cutesy or lovable about Predator, Facehugger, Alien Queen or those gigantic brain-sucking bugs from "Starship Troopers", the flashier versions of which this movie essentially presented us with to "love". Their only purpose for existence in those other movies is to get torched by Ripley or carpet-bombed to smithereen by battleships in orbit but unfortunately none of that happened in this movie.
Not only have I lost two hours watching the movie, followed by a night of nightmares, but now spent an additional hour writing a review here on IMDB so it is probably time to cut my losses but I felt I just had to add my contrarian view to balance what seems like an completely unwarranted positive reception to this mess of a movie.