The cinematography looks fine and the actors apart from Johnny Depp are adequate. But apart from that the entire film is a groan.

I was hoping to like it. But no. It didn't seem appealing to casual or hardcore Potter fans. It was like that awful death-eater attack scene at the burrow in the half blood prince movie.

Remember the scene they added for the film where Harry STUPIDLY (even for Harry) leaves their safe house to go outside alone to fight the death eaters? And he goes right to the middle of that pond surrounded by reeds along the edges? So he goes to the one place where they could easily see him without him likely seeing them. Meanwhile, the order members, apart from Ginny, can't get around a fire to help Harry for a good long stretch of time, because adult wizards including Hermione apparently forget how to get around or through seemingly ordinary fire. Ginny joins Harry in the really vulnerave spot too. Can't have anyone acting rationally in the scene.

Then, the moment the order at last get past the seemingly ordinary fire to help them, the death-eaters fly to the Burrow, which they are supposedly now able to reach despite the magical enchantments, and once inside the area decide to set the place on fire and crash into it with their flying smoke cloud things. But they leave all wizards alone.

And don't worry. The house is fine in a few months later when Harry arrives after the 7 Harrys flight from the Dursely's house. It's like the incident never happened or needed to happen, or make any sense happening. The heroes acted stupid. The villain seem to be mean for the sake of being mean. But not mean enough to attack any of the order members or Harry's friends like any viewer would expect given the established goal of Voldemort or characteristics of his followers.

Crimes of Gridelwald is like that scene. But the scenes lasts for the entire film.

I know people are going to watch it anyway because they will watch anything Harry Potter related. But you have been forewarned.

The story makes no sense. It has a bunch of unexplained moments or coincidences. The attempts to tie the story to historical events is awful. They ruin much of the canon established in Harry Potter related to Dumbledore, Grindlewald and McGonagall. Some characters seem to exist for no reasons. Queenie make decisions which make no sense at all. If all the characters, hers is the one that behaves most bafflingly.

Almost all the jokes aren't funny. The likable characters are no longer likable and most of the long list of new characters aren't give enough time to really shine or make decisions where the viewers seem to care about their decisions. There are characters that I wish were evil that turn good and characters I wish remained or became good who turn or go evil. There is also a lot of stuff which seems to have been setup for a later film rather than an interesting part of film we watched. ItThat's the kind of thing that doesn't fly well in a feature length movie.

JK Rowling's visual world has seriously let me down for the first time. At least the Half Blood Prince issue was for just one scene in an otherwise satisfactory movie.

If I were in charge I would make a new Fantastic Beasts 2 movie and pretend this one never existed. Limit the storylines and characters to a reasonable number. Don't try to impress the diehard fans with references to Harry Potter characters or references to real historical events. It you can work that sort of thing in, fine. But don't force it. Just make a good story that respects the characters you established in the first film.

I'm sure JK Rowling has some good ideas. But they are NOT translating to the movie screen. And it seems they specifically aren't translating for this last film because there were too many small ideas. And no structure.

If you try to enthusiastically equally emphasize too many ideas, you invariably will end up positively emphasizing none of them. That seems to be what happened here.

And the movie wasn't even that long. It just felt REALLy long because it got off to a REALLY bad start. It could have used a prologue to get everyone reminded of what happened in the last film and provide some exposition for a few false f the new characters.

That way the movie could have time where the audience could enjoy watching the story play out, rather than trying and failing to figure out what was happening and why things were happening for the entire run of the movie.