Dis-Grindled

Fantastic Beats and Where to Find Them was, by the high standards set by the preceding Harry Potter films and books, a disappointment. But it was essentially the first entry in J.K. Rowling's universe to be anything less than "quite good," and thus easy to explain away as an aberration, a bump in the road, growing pains in setting up a new second chapter of Harry Potter. But now we have the sequel film, The Crimes of Grindelwald, and that explanation no longer holds. We appear to have a "new normal" for the franchise.

I could, in fact, largely copy-paste my thoughts on the first Fantastic Beasts film in reviewing the second. As with the first film, there's no shortage here of intriguing and fun ideas. J.K. Rowling is nowhere near done expanding the universe she's created, and does not appear to be losing any enthusiasm or skill for building it out. But also as with the first film, she demonstrates that she is not a screen writer. She really seems to need the sprawl of a novel in which to lay down her stories, and then someone else to come along to edit, curate, and repackage them in a way that works in the medium of movies.

There isn't a plot to The Crimes of Grindelwald so much as there's a ledger. Lots of things happen, to be sure, but there doesn't really seem to be a natural sequence to events. Very little can be said to happen because something happened before it. This isn't storytelling worthy of one of the bestselling authors of all time, a clockwork construction where the dominoes fall inevitably in a satisfying way. This is a rambling toddler telling you "this happened, and then this happened," with little rhyme or reason to connect things.

The film revolves around Grindelwald's attempts to find young Credence and seduce him into becoming an ally. It's immediately non-sensical in at least two major ways. First (by my memory, at least), Credence was neutralized as a threat at the end of the previous film, with no indication of anything unresolved there. Second, nothing actually stands in the way of Grindelwald achieving his goal. I mean that quite literally; after a five-minute opening sequence (a dizzying display of CG that's impossible to sort out in your head), there's no articulated obstacle to Grindelwald proceeding straight to his end goal. He simply... doesn't, until the final act.

I knock the CG in the opening scene, but that's not to say CG is an evil throughout the film. One of the true delights of this new movie is a large creature with incongruously cat-like behavior. Sight gags at the margins of the frame are often the work of visual effects too, and really make the world feel fun.

There are some character moments that work too -- basically, most everything involving Dumbledore. Jude Law gives a great performance that feels in continuity with the actors who've played the character before, but with touches all his own. Scenes set at Hogwarts are fun, and Dumbledore's interactions with students (both past and present) are highlights of the film. His relationship with Grindelwald, on the other hand, is portrayed in a predictably shallow and cowardly way. J.K. Rowling famously created waves by declaring (with little evidence in her writing) that Dumbledore is gay. The subtext remains stalwartly "sub" in this movie. There's essentially a single line of dialogue and a single glance that speak to the truth; the former moment has reportedly actually played for laughs with some preview audiences (and seemed hella cheesy to me), while the latter takes place in a context that works only for serious Potter fans.

There are a few somewhat intriguing new characters in this film, including Leta Lestrange and Theseus Scamander... but time developing them is clearly coming at the expense of the established characters from the first film. Newt remains impenetrably one-dimensional, Jacob and Tina are entirely marginalized with no meaningful role in the plot whatsoever, and Queenie's behavior throughout is unjustified (and, I dare say, unjustifiable). Grindlewald himself isn't even developed particularly well as a villain. It feels like the most diabolical "crimes" of the film are carried out by others in his name, and efforts near the end to "give the villain a point of view" are frankly too effective. (If I'm correctly picking up what he/Rowling are putting down here, his "ends" are 100% noble; only his "means" are questionable. Which sounds like what you'd want in a good villain, but still doesn't come off very compelling here.)

Overall, the sprinkles of good feel fewer and farther between than in the first Fantastic Beasts, while the muddy lack of clarity feels greater. I give The Crimes of Grindlewald a C-. I believe I'm done following this franchise in movie theaters. I suspect it's all home rentals for me from here on.