Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Despite having allowed Harry Potter to grow up and graduate from Hogwarts, novelist J.K. Rowling still believes there are worlds left to conquer. With the new film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, she makes her screenwriting debut by exploring a different corner of the wizarding universe: New York in the 1920s.

A disheveled Englishman named Newt Scamander (Oscar-winner Eddie Redmayne) shows up at immigration with a suspicious-looking briefcase. It has a faulty latch, but when the guard inspects its contents, it appears to have nothing but old clothes and other traveling knickknacks.

In reality only Scamander and the audience can tell that the case is teeming with a bizarre array of Pokemon-like creatures eager to romp around the Big Apple. The guard doesn't see any of this because he's a muggle, or, as Yanks call him, a "no mag," which means he lacks the magical powers to see brightly colored, lizard birds the size of tractor-trailers.

Scamander, whose books later show up in the library at Hogwarts during Potter's term, is something of a magical zoologist, and he has crossed the Atlantic to let one of the creatures frolic in Arizona where he belongs.

Thanks to to that cruddy latch, the occupants of the case frequently cause havoc all over New York, which isn't the most hospitable place for wizards or witches. They live underground because there's a group of "no mags" called the New Salem Philanthropic Society led by Mary Lou (Samantha Morton), who thinks the witch trials were a good idea.

Scamander's activities immediately draw the attention of a pair of determined magical cops named Porpentina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston) and Percival Graves (Colin Farrell) who think the Brit's mercy mission is a waste of time at best and a dangerous breach of secrecy at worst. Some of the "no mags" could get violent if they knew wizards and witches lived somewhere other than the history books.

David Yates, who helmed the last few Harry Potter movies, is back in charge, and he's an old hand at creating magical environments that don't overwhelm the actors and the story. He has restraint that enables the moments of impossible wonder to stick out. In some of the previous movies, the sequences of potential awe were lost in a visual deluge.

Without having a book or an additional screenwriter around, Rowling demonstrates that her eye for character is as sharp as her imagination.

Scamander's shabby clothes and seemingly absent-minded demeanor belie a strong sense of compassion and a hard-earned knowledge about the creatures in his care. They can do wonderful things (yes, there's even a platypus that picks people's pockets), but nobody else has bothered to study them as thoroughly as he has. Redmayne projects an infectious amiability that helps make up for when Scamander's quests seem more foolish than heroic.

The cast is large and at times tricky to follow, but always engaging. Dan Fogler is delightfully bewildered as Jacob Kowalski, a wannabe baker who stumbles into the world of magic that he was completely oblivious to. He also falls in love with Porpentina's sister Queenie (Alison Sudol), who can read minds. Jacob's earnestness appeals to her in a way that no other man's allegedly sophisticated manner has done before.

Rowling creates dense meta-universes for her characters, and it's a little harder to grasp her new environment on-screen. In print, you can flip back a few pages and figure out why characters are doing what they're doing or why obvious solutions aren't explored.

In a city where anything can happen, it sometimes helps to have an idea why it does or doesn't.

MovieStyle on 11/18/2016