The first thing that I must mention here, as it affected my opinion of this film, was that the theatre was a bit stuffy. What happened during some slower parts of the film was that I became physically uncomfortable, eventually just waiting for the movie to end. I enjoyed the first "Fantastic Beasts" film and was entertained with the new characters and new dynamics. I was critical of the fact that JK. Rowling served both as original book author and screenplay writer. It is a golden rule that you need a fresh mind to take material from another source and know what to remove (without being too attached to the original material), what to hone, and what to condense. I never had read Rowling's books, never thought the movie adaptations felt like a book, and were very enjoyable as movies on their own.

However, this sequel to "Fantastic Beasts" felt bogged down in extended scenes of character introductions and/or interactions. Worse, where were those fantastic beasts that is the namesake of this new franchise? There was more screen time for the charismatic beasts in the first film, and helped balance the story from getting involved with the politics of magic. Aah, but unfortunately Rowling goes George Lucas on us and involves a senate with an extended diatribe by our designated bad guy Grindelwald. I think a better screenplay would go with "less is more" and abbreviate the speeches given by Grindelwald, and let his actions speak louder than words.

An enjoyable subplot from the first film was the bubbly Queenie character falling for a "Muggle", an ordinary man with no magic abilities. The consequences of that relationship are explored a bit in this film. There is also the establishment of the whole Dumbledore connection. It was scenes setting up those connections that started to bore me. For the last act of the film, there was more concern of setting up things for future films, to the detriment of the entertainment value of this film. This film is also darker than the first film. Both in the material and the look of the film. The general darkness of a lot scenes did not help with my enthusiasm for this film, again combined with the stuffy air in the theatre where I was. The characters of Newt and Tina were a good match, a bit of Scully and Mulder, in the first film. They were also the main characters that had the most screen time in the first film. Here, Tina does not show up until perhaps halfway into Beasts 2. And like I mentioned before, those fantastic beasts are pretty much just a side thought in this outing, with a large furry monster the only one who shows up here and there.

The effects this time around were less engaging, but none the less nice looking, especially the recreation of London and Paris in the early part of the last century. In fact it was a nice change of convention, where the film did not feel obligated to go overboard with a big effects spectacle to end the 3rd act. Perhaps if I was a fan of the Rowling books, I would have enjoyed this more. But the fact was the first film had a lot of fresh ideas, where this second outing feels too concerned in configuring the story like a chess game. Which is also why the film started to drag after awhile. Perhaps if they worked more of those beasts into the story, it would've felt more like an adventure. There was also less humour this time around, something that could have helped save me from getting bored.