Les Animaux fantastiques : Les Secrets de Dumbledore

The Secrets of Dumbledore is convoluted by inconsequential plotlines and redundant characters. It's so unfocused, it doesn't have a consistent tone or protagonist. The film centers around wizarding politics, but doesn't elaborate on them. This shrinks the Potterverse and satisfies nobody. Meanwhile, Redmayne and Law's protagonist duet is equally unsatisfying. Oddly, no character feels essential (besides Grindelwald) and action sequences don't progress the story. Ultimately, the movie is overstuffed and develops nothing. Mikkelsen and Fogler excel in their limited roles, but they're sparse in this jumble. Without streamlining, The Secrets of Dumbledore is emotionally uninspired.

Technically, The Secrets of Dumbledore is disappointing. First, the effects are overdone. Earlier action is compelling, but the finale is undercut by excessive CGI. Plus, the production design in that final act feels empty. Squandering the union of fantasy and period dressings, the climax is woefully shallow. Furthermore, the editing is bloated and arbitrary because scenes don't influence one another. Lastly, the imagery is drab due to needlessly muted colors and plain framing. The solid music, impressive cast, and meaningful sound can only go so far. Overall, The Secrets of Dumbledore might please some, but is unlikely to leave an impression.

Writing: 5/10 Direction: 5/10 Cinematography: 6/10 Acting: 7/10 Editing: 5/10 Sound: 8/10 Score/Soundtrack: 7/10 Production Design: 6/10 Casting: 8/10 Effects: 6/10

Overall Score: 6.3/10.

The Harry Potter books achieved so much success because a dedicated writer thought about the story for years and the result, imperfect as it was, became beloved by millions of people as the effort showed. This film is perfect, though, a total and complete mess, written by people who can never come up with more than an elevator pitch and the crave for a big payout. The movie uses a plot that purposefully makes no sense, built on a previous film that no one remembers and manages to cement Dumbledore as a manipulative asshole whose value for humanity is that he looks nice compared to the genocidal maniacs he fights against. But he's gay, so that's fine.

It gets worse, though. So many things in the film not only not make sense, but contradict lore from the books. The film is called Fantastic Beasts, but really it's just one and it doesn't do much except for the ending. The magical world of wizards is now angry, political, divided and warlike, because that's what Americans are like, obliterating the elegant traditionalist Britishness of the books. Magic is only used to show off, fight or destroy now.

The more I think about it, the angrier I become, which is not really what I want or need. My advice is to skip this film completely. Too bad, too, because Eddie Redmayne, Jude Law, Dan Fogler and Mads Mikkelsen did a great job as actors. Alas, the material they had to work with was utter garbage.

I am from the Harry Potter generation, I grew up with the books and the movies so there's no denying that I am a massive fan of the saga, so when the first news of prequels came out I was as you might imagine expectant!

I thoroughly enjoyed the first movie, sure it lacks the originality and the magic of the original Potter films but it had one thing I really liked: it didn't force itself to be a part of the former stories while still being engaging and clearly happening in the same "Universe".

This changed a bit when the second movie came around, Crimes of Grindelwald made a clear shift on the story and started to force itself in the "Harry Potter" timeline by navigating through the past of some of the beloved characters present in the original movies.

And now the third.. where things just simply go sideways, not only it tries to explore even further Dumbledore's past, but fails miserably on doing so. There are a lot of points in the story that simply make no sense at all, the most annoying being the fact that most characters on screen have absolutely no influence on the plot, they are extras in their own film. Grindelwald "rise to power" is so forced, senseless and so generic to the point of being cringe.. It almost doesn't feel like a Wizarding World movie, the only reason I won't rate it lower is the creatures are indeed a great addition and being able to see Hogwarts always brings good memories, but that's about it in terms of positive aspects.

The Credence plot is pointless after two movies developing it, the climax of the story feels empty after 140 minutes of waiting, the magic these days is used as generic fantasy movie would depict it with complete disregard of the "Potter rules", people throwing spells here and there without pronouncing them and us (the audience) not understanding what actually is going on.. They took the magic out and inserted the desire for money, it's sad for Potter fans around the world.

Though the style part was enjoyable on it's own; the cinematography, special effects, costumes, score, set design and much of the acting was brilliant. It felt great to lose myself into the feel of the wizarding world again. But the plot and the writing felt unanchored in anything real or relatable. Nothing felt earned. Events just happened without much anticipation or appreciation of their significance, and I didn't feel invested much in any of the plot lines or characters. I'm not expert enough to pinpoint exactly what went wrong, but I know something did.

The story of the movie was average but the screenplay was very weak. There are hardly any entertaining scenes in the movie. Movie scenes were a bit boring and slow. Part one movie had good entertaining scenes. Part 2 movie had fairly entertaining scenes but this movie lacks a lot of entertaining scenes. Good entertaining scenes should have been given. The length of the movie could have been cut to a minimum of 15 to 20 minutes. The performance of all the actors in the movie was good but there was no heroine and Johnny Depp in the movie. This movie proves that no one can replace Johnny Depp. Those who have seen the previous two movies in this series must watch this movie at least once. Otherwise, the story of the movie series will not be understood. Overall below average movie.