I like many other fans of Harry Potter have read the books and seen the movies. JK Rowling did a really wonderful thing introducing us to the wizarding world. Now though, JK Rowling is doing a bad thing writing these screenplay's for the Fantastic Beasts series. Just kidding. Sort of. While Crimes of Grindelwald is definitely better than its predecessor, it still fails to inspire or instill the magic that the HP films had on its viewers.

Newt Scamander, fantastic beast catcher, is back once again this time to find his flame Tina, who has grown apart from him. Meanwhile, evil dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald has escaped and is now recruiting followers, to revolt against non magical beings and create a pure blooded wizarding world. Albus Dumbledore, enlists the help of Newt and his friends to take down the evil wizard. The film ups the starpower adding (a more prominent), Johnny Depp, Jude Law, Ezra Miller, and Zoe Kravitz.

The acting and look of the film is good. I watched it in Dolby Cinema and it looked great on the bigger screen. The film is a fun watch in small doses and is definitely more entertaining than the first. That said, this film doesn't have the mystique of the HP films, There are no stakes at all. Where is the interest in the characters, the plot, and the story like we used to care for in the Harry Potter films? The plot is also problematic because its actually hard to follow, felt like there were too many plot lines going on that it got muddled along the way.

There overarching plot still feels basic and ruined by the non focused nature of all the side information being given to you. Yates does a good job directing visually but Rowling's story lets everything down. This film is also clearly trying to build other sequels and it was a bit irritating. And there are five films planned in this series. I have the same sentiments of the Hobbit trilogy for this, lets not try to capitalize on prequels because it kind of ruins the magic established by the original franchise.

6/10