Film

It Looks Like ‘The Crimes Of Grindelwald’ Include Making A Film That Nobody Likes

"Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is enough to make J.K. Rowling fans weep in frustration, provided they can even keep their eyes open.”

by Patrick Lenton  14 November 2018
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald reviews

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Friends, The Crimes Of Grindelwald reviews are flooding in! J.K. Rowling’s tentatively awaited sequel to Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them sure has people feeling a lot of emotions — and much like Voldemort and his Deatheaters, the reviews are best described as “not good”.

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In the second film in the Fantastic Beasts prequels to the overly popular Harry Potter movies, our friend Newt Scamander is tasked with hunting down the evil Grindelwald, who is up to no good, hence the titular “crimes”.

Seems a slight departure from the first film, which is about cool mythical animals, like redheads and men who look good in vests, but whatever.

The film has been surrounded by controversy since its announcement, most notably for hiring rampant dickweed and alleged abuser Johnny Depp to play the dark wizard Grindelwald. There were also a bunch of issues around queer erasure and weird casting. This wizard movie has really punched above its weight in terms of generating discourse.

Anyway, the reviews have started trickling in, and almost immediately you notice a bunch of people just don’t like it.

The Crimes Of The Crimes Of Grindelwald Reviews

The Atlantic described The Crimes of Grindelwald as “a film that exists primarily to answer questions nobody would have ever thought to ask about a series of books that already told a very complete story.”

FILMINK continued that theme, claiming it was “sort of fun at the start, kinda agreeable at the end, but will suck your whimsy dry for most of its runtime.”

Mashable struggled with the sheer number of characters: “There are something like a dozen major characters and half a dozen storylines in Crimes of Grindelwald. In addition, there are subplots within subplots, supporting characters with their own supporting characters, Easter eggs butting up against other Easter eggs, and secrets stacked on top of secrets, until the whole precarious pile comes tumbling down in a chaotic third act.”

The New York Times agrees, saying: “Rowling has surrendered to her maximalist tendencies and so cluttered up the story that you spend far too much time trying to untangle who did what to whom and why.”

The Los Angeles Times is sick and tired of this entire business, saying: “an excruciating bore just barely enlivened by stray glimpses of Hogwarts, a flicker of gay romance and a menagerie of computer-generated creepy-crawlies, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is enough to make J.K. Rowling fans weep in frustration, provided they can even keep their eyes open.”

While Variety went all in and called it “the noisiest, most rhythmless, and least coherent entry in the Wizarding World saga since Alfonso Cuarón first gave the franchise its sea legs in 2004.”

Yikes. Yikes indeed!

Accio Faint Praise

It’s not all bad! Apparently the film looks really nice?

“There might not be a more gorgeous-looking movie this year than Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald,” stated Entertainment Weekly. The sentiment is echoed by a bunch of other publications.

Avada Kedavra, Critics!

But also a lot of people actually like the film, proving that critics be criticising, and we should only ever trust one thing: our heart.

“That the film remains enticing despite its evolving, still-pallid hero speaks to Rowling’s storytelling strengths,” says The Hollywood Reporter. Cool!

The Crimes Of Grindelwald “is a a darker and bolder film that intertwines different eras of the ‘Potter’ mythology and delivers a more relevant cinematic villain than that malevolent snake face, Voldemort.” says USA Today. “Old-school Potterheads will rejoice, though fans of the charmingly quirky group of heroes from the first Beasts may lament their do-gooders getting lost in a growing magical landscape.”

Great!

Meanwhile, The Washington Post hypes up a big reveal at the end: “The Crimes of Grindelwald has one of the biggest third-act reveals in the whole Harry Potter series.”

When is Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald in cinemas? On Thursday 15th November, my good friend.

Patrick Lenton is the Entertainment Editor of Junkee. He tweets @patricklenton.