Dan Fogler who plays Kowalski is easily the best thing in this movie, he's so hug-able!!!!

It's almost worth it to see this in the theater just to watch him.... almost.

I wanted to judge this as it's own thing and not as part of the Harry Potter world but it's clear the movie wants you to associate it with HP from the opening theme to name dropping Hogwarts and Dumbledore, their target audience is obvious.

This is the main problem, as a movie this is pretty muddled, unlike HP that created a separate world for wizards and witches here there is no line between them, no wonder, all shades of beige of the 1920's with a colourful bug thrown in there and lets call that bug the magic...

The writing is also surprisingly generic from someone amazing as J.K. Rowling, you can easily predict the next line of dialogue and there are no magic spells, seriously sometimes they say nothing and just point the wand for it to do things like a gun!!!! did they forget how this is supposed to work? The plot is weak at best, contrive a reason for the main to go to the U.S., have the beasts be whatever the plots need them to be etc... not what'd you'd expect from a great writer.

The weakest element is the main and the villain, Eddie Redmayne is forgettable in this and I don't even know who the underlying villain of all this is (the one in the newspaper) who doesn't remember he who must not be named? and what's with the child abuse story in there? it seemed odd in such a movie to have that, the kids in the theater were actually scared and some parents left!

Overall an OK but meh movie that is more suitable for TV then the theater and requires focus (and a point beyond milking HP fans!)

Also if you have motion sickness take your pills before entering, they do the 3D ride thing with the effects and the 3D bug popping out of the screen at you which was really annoying and distracting.