Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore – Film Review
I didn’t enjoy Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald much at all so I had very little hope for its sequel, The Secrets of Dumbledore. While it isn’t perfect, it is still a vast improvement on the second film.
Set in the 1930s, the third instalment follows Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), his brother Theseus (Callum Turner), his assistant Bunty (Victoria Yeates), Professor Hicks (Jessica Williams) and muggle friend Jacob (Dan Fogler) as they carry out Albus Dumbledore’s (Jude Law) orders in an effort to stop Gellert Grindelwald (Mads Mikkelsen) from manipulating his way into becoming the head of the wizarding world.
Given the controversy surrounding people involved in this film – J.K. Rowling‘s position on the transgender community, Ezra Miller‘s recent arrest and Johnny Depp being replaced by Mikkelsen after losing a trial – I wanted to not like it. But despite my misgivings, I must admit that it was better than I expected and I had a surprising amount of fun with it.
It had a great sense of humour and I laughed out loud often, and that’s mostly thanks to Newt’s awkwardness, Jacob’s bewilderment and the excellent Pickett and Teddy, Newt’s pets. I loved that the Fantastic Beasts of the title had more of the spotlight this time because they’re super cute and have fun personalities. There is a setpiece involving Newt doing hip-swivelling moves to enchant a creature and it is the standout sequence of the whole movie – absolutely hilarious. Plus, there’s a new Bambi-like animal called a Qilin that made my heart burst.
The film is at its strongest when it’s being light and whimsical with the beasts, but those scenes only make up a small portion of the runtime. There are so many characters and so much going on that it’s quite hard to follow the plot. Make sure you take a refresher before watching this – you’ll need it! The film is a touch too long at 2 hours 22 minutes, the CGI is fairly decent but you can tell certain landscapes (such as Bhutan) aren’t real, and I expected more from the ending so it was a little underwhelming.
I’m pleased Mikkelsen was brought in to replace Depp because he has this natural menacing energy without having to do very much. He also has terrific chemistry with Law and their looks of longing convincingly portray the lovers’ history. It was lovely to see Law doing so much more in this film but his Dumbledore accent was very inconsistent. This film does quite well in terms of LGBTQ+ representation – it doesn’t go overboard with it but their past love was spoken about more plainly than I expected.
I went off Redmayne for a while but Cabaret restored my faith in his acting and I thought he was great fun as the quirky Newt. Williams, who has so much more screentime in this film, is the most charismatic as the capable Hicks. There has been a lot of speculation about Katherine Waterston‘s absence from the posters and trailers – and that’s because she is barely in the film! Her fans will be very disappointed.
I went in with low expectations and was pleasantly surprised to watch a sequel that was superior to its predecessor. That doesn’t happen very often!
In cinemas Friday 8th April