Two film's into the new wizarding world and I think it's now safe to say Fantastic Beasts is never going to be Harry Potter.

Its a big void to fill and one that was always going to take some serious magic to fill anyway but poor old Beasts not only pales in significance to the simple joys and wonders of its much better cousin, its just not a very interesting or good film regardless of its bloodline.

A big step backwards from the enjoyable if highly forgettable first film from 2016, Crimes of Grindelwald is nothing but a filler episode for a franchise that has been planned for five feature films, as we again follow Eddie Redmayne's slightly irritating and rather so-so Newt Scamander on another adventure, that this time features more of Johnny Depp's big bad Gellert Grindelwald and an abundance of side plots and straying's that matter very little.

It's hard to remember a film from recent memory that literally has so little pay-off, clear reason to exist in the form it does or a film that spends so much time on plodding out a plotline with pure padding and fluff, which makes returning director David Yates event feel like such a skippable offering.

The film still looks quite wonderous (as you'd expect from a film with such a budget) as we traverse an array of eye capturing sets, that features a highlight return to Hogwarts, while the films so called fantasic beasts are inventive enough but Crimes of Grindelwald lacks heart or soul or character depth needed to make all the magic or lack thereof come together.

It's not like Yates film doesn't have enough characters to work with as returning cast members like Catherine Waterston and Ezra Miller or the rather annoying Dan Fogler and Alison Sudol as love interest Gracie are joined by Depp, Zoe Kravitz as Leta Lestrange and Jude Law as everyones favourite professor Albus Dumbledore.

These new players all do fine in their roles, with Depp the best his been in a while and Law doing a typically solid rendition of a younger yet no less wiser Dumbledore but we don't really get enough meaningful time with anyone of these characters, much like all the others, meaning its increasingly hard to care about their dilemas and outcomes and by the time Crimes of Grindelwald's downright lame finale roles around, it feels like these performers have been duped, much like the audience has.

Final Say -

The first Fantastic Beasts didn't exactly set the world on fire but it feels like a masterpiece compared to Crimes of Grindelwald.

A mostly charmless and dull affair that feels like it's whole point of being is to open the door for a seemingly more exciting chapter, after this effort, this still budding franchise sits in a precarious position with all signs pointing towards it sadly being lifeless in the water, living off nothing more than the goodwill of its beloved kin.

2 public rallies out of 5