One step at a time

Being Harry Potter-deprived as a child took its toll on me ... I never knew what everyone meant when they yelled out ‘Expelliarmus!’

I wish I could have vanished under a magical cloak when I had to explain to friends that I wasn’t allowed to watch the films because my mother believed that witches, Horcruxes, Dementors and all such things were unsuitable for one so young.

However, this weekend, now all grown up and having become well-versed on all eight earlier movies, I was excited to seeJ.K. Rowling’s latest Potter-inspired offering.

Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them has been the topic of much fan speculation … but unfortunately it fails to live upto expectations. Perhaps I was expecting too much? This movie is more a case of let’s wait and see what happens next.

The star of the show is a wizard NewtScamander who travels to 1920s New York from the UK carrying a suitcase full of fantastic beasts.

Newt is shown as someone who is awkward, introverted and would rather mind his own business but an unfortunate encounter with an aspiring baker leads to his magical abilities being unveiled.

Trouble from the magical world follows, especially when one of his beasts escapes and causes chaos in the city.

The movie starts off at a cracking pace butit all too quickly comes across as a scene-setter for the five-strong series. Undoubtedly, the CGI effects are clever, Eddie Redmayne perfectly portrays his character of Newt with an awkward charm one would expect a magic geek to possess, and there were a few characters worth keeping an eye out for those upcoming sequels, such as Colin Firth’s Percival Graves and Ezra Miller’s Credence.

However, it is difficult to appreciate the various narrative strands. Instead of wanting more you simply end up feeling let down.

The plot is so unfulfilling with its numerous cliff-hangers - which probably may make sense when it comes to setting the background for the rest of the movies - but doesn’t work in isolation.

Nevertheless, Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, is a more comedic offering than the original Potter series, with Newt running around the Muggle world to capture the creatures he has accidentally let loose.

What Rowling manages to do well here is appeal to all geeks in the audience. Whether it’s the 10-year-old excited about having something that releases his or her inner geek, or adults still clinging to the child geek inside them, or parents taking along their own little geeks for the show, there’s something for everyone.

There are also elements of nostalgia that remind Potter fans of the sorcerous world which they got to know and came tolove. The shift from a story about Harry’s adolescence to Newt’s adulthood is what makes this appealing to those who have grown up alongside the franchise.

David Yates, who directed the film as well as the last four Harry Potter movies, will also be directing the next four in this series. With his experience, one can only hope that there will be more substance in the sequels to remind us why we fell in love with the theme of a world combined with magic and normality in the first place.

With this in mind, we owe Rowling the benefit of the doubt seeing as how this is her screen writing debut. It would be beastly not to. Homework marked with a grade C with a note from the current head of Hogwarts: ‘could do better’.

Showing in: Cineco, Seef II, Wadi Al Sail, Saar, Al Jazeera, Dana Cineplex, Novo, Mukta A2

Rating: 3/5