Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is the Pettigrew of the Wizarding World entries in the way that is tags along with the cool kids but isn't particularly useful in any way.

You don't really learn much new about the Wizarding World and the characters don't seem to go through any change, although they feebly say out loud that they do. Quoting Newt Scamader, "I've changed", said awkwardly and flatly just as he spoke in the beginning.

The characters are boring and the beasts are just random animals that we have in real life with an extra limb or something along those lines, but they don't touch on creatures that appear in the Potter books that are truly interesting. It should really be called "Weird Beasts You've Never Heard Of and Why To Care About Them". Even the niffler only appeared to be a ploy to sell stuffed animals and t-shirts with a cute thing on them.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them WISHES it was part of the Harry Potter series, but shares extremely little of the point and purpose. The only thing worse than the intent to try and keep Harry Potter relevant (which is completely unnecessary because Harry Potter is timeless) is the amount of VFX that weighs Fantastic Beasts down. The colour grading is fantastic but the overwhelming reliance on VFX makes it a truly ugly watch. Harry Potter has its share of VFX, I understand, but it wasn't completely reliant on it the way Fantastic Beasts is.

I'm giving Fantastic Beasts a rating of 3 because it turned out to just be another greenscreen/soundstage AAA Hollywood blockbuster that cares very little for the original, lush lore of Rowling's original series and is irrelevant in its own unique way by ignoring all the deeply loved details of Harry Potter.

Any true lover of the Harry Potter world will be able to see right through Fantastic Beasts guise for what it is, a really long commercial for off-brand Harry Potter products at your local Hot Topic