![]() ![]() Mostly, it’s all uncomfortable and uneasy, and even the happiest moments, like the birth of a pair of magical creatures who have a real hand (hoof?) in the future of the magical world and its citizens, are immediately tempered by darkness. “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore” Warner Bros. (Though a handful of brightly staged, CGI-heavy battles at least add some spark to the action.) Grindelwald wants nothing less than a world war that pits the magical against the Muggles (gee, I wonder who will win), and the film’s reliance on Nazi-heavy imagery, like a series of marches in Berlin and the rise of a nefarious leader backed by frothing crowds, is far from entertaining. The series has never been able to effectively marry its disparate threads - the wondrous joy of an entire taxonomy of magical creatures (delightful!) and the simmering darkness of a world divided (heavy!) - and that tension is even more pronounced in this third film. ![]() ![]() If it sounds like the last film, oh boy, does it ever. They’re aided by his heartbroken ex, Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law), and things are made still more complicated by Grindelwald’s hold on the grim orphan Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller) and the waylaid Queenie Goldstein (Alison Sudol). Picking up soon after the events of the second film, this outing finds magizoologist Newt Scamander ( Eddie Redmayne) and a loose group of pals (including witches, wizards, and everyone’s favorite Muggle) on the hunt for the evil wizard Gellert Grindelwald (now played by Mads Mikkelsen, a casting switcheroo the film never directly addresses, which is oddly refreshing). ‘Nimona’ Review: This Shapeshifting Queer Love Story Hates Authoritarianism in All Its Forms And while there are moments in which it seems to be settling into something cohesive, “The Secrets of Dumbledore” can’t ever crack the own mysteries at its core. The series’ third outing, “ Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore,” falls into precisely the same traps as its predecessor, offering up an unwieldy, mostly unsettling mash-up of adult themes and childish whimsy, made still more inscrutable by too many subplots, too many characters, and a tone that veers wildly off-course at every possible turn. It’s a lot of time to fill, and while the second film in the franchise nudges its narrative forward, it’s at the expense of a bloated, unfocused screenplay.” Rowling’s much-hyped followup series to ‘Harry Potter,’ a franchise that is at the mercy of slapdash planning (these films are cobbled together from various pieces of ‘Wizarding World’ material, not single novels) and the kind of higher-up decree that promised five films (five!) before the first one hit theaters. When the second film in the flailing “Fantastic Beasts” franchise hit theaters in November 2018, this critic’s review of “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes on Grindelwald” opened thus: “The cracks are starting to show in J.K. ![]()
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