In 2016, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them took us back to the cinematic Wizarding World we thought we'd left behind for good with 2011's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. Longstanding Potter director David Yates took us on a romp through 1920s New York, with Eddie Redmayne's awkward hero Newt Scamander hunting his escaped monsters, while sinister forces were at play in the shadows.
There's a lot of pressure, then, on Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, which is expected to replicate the easy-going, family-friendly adventures of the original while burrowing deeply into Harry Potter lore. This includes introducing a younger version of Dumbledore, as well as the beginning of Gellert Grindelwald's famous war, and the past of the shady Lestranges.
And did we mention continuing the stories of all the new Beasts characters? That too.
Written by JK Rowling herself, the film is a beautiful return to the Wizarding World, with plenty of magical moments and twisty lore to keep fans interested. But, as a middle film in a five-part series, it sometimes struggles under the pressure of juggling numerous storylines and manoeuvring its cast into place for later movies.
The year is 1927 – some months after the events in New York – and Newt is still in trouble with the Ministry of Magic. With the dark wizard Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) fomenting discord against muggles and searching for the powerful Obscurial Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller) in Paris, Newt is enlisted to intervene secretly by Hogwarts' Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law).
Caught up in the struggle with Grindelwald are returning characters Queenie (Alison Sudol), Jacob (Dan Fogler) and Tina (Katherine Waterston), alongside Newt's old (probably more than a) friend Leta Lestrange (Zoë Kravitz) and her fiancé (and Newt's older brother – awks!), the auror Theseus Scamander (Callum Turner). The race is on to find Credence, save him from Grindelwald, and discover the truth about where he came from.
Redmayne really shines as Newt in a way that he didn't quite manage in the first film. Like Leslie Knope in Parks and Recreation, he was originally written as an odd character out of his depth, only to transform, in Crimes of Grindelwald, into an odd character who totally knows his stuff, casting some beautiful, never-before-seen spells as he hunts Credence and Tina through the streets of Paris.
Law too stands out as the younger (and sexier – you know you were thinking it) Dumbledore, striking a fine balance between affable and evasive and feeling very much true to the character we know so well. Fogler is as fun as he was in the first film, although we don't get quite as much of him this time around.
As for the controversial inclusion of Depp, he delivers a perfectly serviceable and predictably Deppian performance that will not change anyone's mind about his inclusion in the series one way or the other. And despite the Nagini issue, be prepared for Claudia Kim's Maledictus to play only a very small part in the movie.
Crimes of Grindelwald doesn't take as much advantage of its Parisian setting as it could. But, in true Harry Potter style, continues to build on the existing magical world with new spells, twisty revelations and brilliant beasts.
Where the previous film struggled to tie Newt's hunt for his creatures into the more compelling Grindelwald narrative, this film has less focus on the monsters but manages to build their presence more closely into the main story, to the benefit of both Newt and his magical menagerie.
One of the film's greatest stumbling blocks is that the cast is just too big – it's still introducing or reintroducing them and establishing their motives an hour into the film. Some characters make huge decisions predicated on a small amount of screen time, and one of the film's central plots becomes both confusing and of questionable relevance to the ongoing narrative.
The story becomes an exercise in positioning its cast for future adventures, and we hope that the third and fourth films will strike a better balance between their own plot and laying groundwork for the fifth and final outing.
Crimes of Grindelwald is a beautiful film, and sure to satisfy Harry Potter fans eager for another slice of Rowling's magic, but it has a definite case of the mid-series blues. It isn't boring but, ultimately, it feels like an exercise in manoeuvring chess pieces for the sake of future movies. And though the board is very lovely to look at, it won't go down as one of the stronger entries in the Wizarding World series.
Director: David Yates; Starring: Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol, Ezra Miller, Zoë Kravitz, Callum Turner, Claudia Kim, Jude Law, Johnny Depp; Running time: 134 minutes; Certificate: 12A
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is in cinemas now.
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