“Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” Easily Most Enjoyable “Harry Potter” Film

This past weekend, I had a chance to check out Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Here are my thoughts.

Fantastic Beasts open with Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne)
making his way to New York City. In his possession, he has some magical beasts. He's trying to get one of the beasts to Arizona so it can live happily ever after.

After a hilarious mishap involving a Nifler (or as I call it, a "money duck"), Newt comes into contact with a former Auror, Tina (Katherine Waterston) and a "No-Mag" Jakob (Dan Fogler). And as you probably guess, some of the Fantastic Beasts get released from Newt's case and then he has to (Where to) Find Them.

There is also a storyline involving Colin Farrell's character of Percival Graves taking on a woman who warns of witches and calls for a "Second Salem." This is the main conflict of the movie but the far more interesting storyline definitely involves Newt Scamander trying to re-capture his beasts.

I'm not a huge Harry Potter fan but I found myself really enjoying this film. I liked that it was it's own thing and wasn't weight down by having to remain faithful to any source material. The creature designs were also very well done with a nice mix of "I WANT TO HUG THAT THING" (the money duck) and "GET THAT THING AWAY FROM ME!" (the Erumpent aka "Lava-rhino"). Newt Scamander is definitely the most likable character out of any Harry Potter thing ever. That definitely has a lot to do with Eddie Redmayne's performance. The amount of charm and awkwardness he brought to the role was very appreciated. I think we could all relate to my Scamander.

The biggest plus for me was the location change from England to America. It was nice that after 8 movies in the Harry Potter series, we FINALLY got at least some idea of what the wizarding world is like over in the states. I enjoyed hearing teases of the Ilvermorny school and hope to see it in one of the next 4 movies set for release.

Overall, as a non-fan of Harry Potter, this film is incredibly accessible. You don't have to worry about having seen the previous x amount of movies to enjoy this unlike with the later Potter films. This movie is a great standalone film. This Thanksgiving, you could do a lot worse when picking a movie to enjoy with the family!