Fantastic Beats and Where To Find Them

Warning - This review contains some spoilers ⚠️ 

Kind of Christmas themed and kind of not - sorry! But maybe you are thinking of buying cinema vouchers for Christmas or taking them to a movie, or maybe you have come across this just because it is Harry Potter related, either way I hope my review helps you.

Based on the book written by author of Harry Potter, J.K.Rowling, Fantastic Beats and Where To Find Them is set in a completely different world and era from the original Harry Potter movies and with a fresh-faced cast, the film had a lot to live up to following the success of the previous films.

Traveling with a leather suitcase, Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), a young wizard from England, travels to New York whilst on his way to Arizona. This suitcase isn’t just any old suitcase. Inside, a variety of magical creatures live - a bit like Narnia! But when a creature escapes and lands in the hands of aspiring baker, Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler) who has a similar suitcase, he has no choice but to use magic. But if things couldn’t get much worse, a former detective for the Magical Congress of the United States of America (MACUSA), Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston), is watching closely and arrests Newt for being an unregistered wizard, leaving Newt with the wrong suitcase and Jacob with the magical one. While Redmayne's character chases his creatures, a dark, dangerous figure exposes magic to a large amount of muggles, but they don't know what or where it is, nor how to catch it.

Just like Harry Potter, the graphics and visual effects were phenomenal. Even the cute (and sometimes scary) beasts were very life-like. The acting and plot-line certainly made up for it being rather a slow and repetitive nearing the end.  After Tina deems Newt a threat to the wizarding world, she tries to hand him in, but nobody is interested as she was kicked out of investigating anything. Jacob is quite a comedic character and it adds a different aspect that Harry Potter never had. After a shaky start, he soon became a much loved character. He clearly likes Quennie (Alison Sudol) which in the beginning appears a very boring, cliché story, but they thankfully stayed away from that which made for an emotional ending and a very good movie, even if you don’t like Harry Potter.

The acting from the new cast was superb and the atmosphere worked well together with the setting and new era of the film.  The music and sound effects were very similar to Harry Potter which helped warm us up to the idea of the  movie without Harry, Hermonie and Ron.

I don't want to spoil the plot for you but so I shall leave it at that.

Let me know if you have watched it, or if you are going to watch it and what you thought of it. Who was your favourite beast? Leave a comment below.