This is a total cash grab. If it's wasn't for the Harry Potter-related pedigree, if this was just some fantasy Disney or Dreamworks movie, nobody would pay it any more attention than countless other FX films.

It's just not good. It's boring. The characters are bland and pointless. The story is nonsensical gibberish. Period. You don't have a good movie with that right there.

But it's also produced poorly. NYC looks sterile and fake. It never seems like they aimed a camera at a real street or a carefully built set. It's that shined up virtual set that George Lucas brought us in the Star Wars prequels. Bleh.

The titular beasties are absolutely uninspiried. Napoleon Dynamite's "liger" is about the extent of what you get. A platypus that steals jewelry. A rhino with an inflatable snout. Every animal is 2-3 actual animals mashed up.

These "magical world" movies are making the movie-going public weary. How many of these can the put out and make money? Weird magic people who live in complex fantasy worlds with lots of rules. BFG and Mrs. Perigrine's Home for Unusual Children come to mind.

Harry Potter succeeded because it was the story of a family and the central characters were children discovering a whimsical new world. And the princial photography was shot on location in actual historic buildings. The CGI supported the story. In this movie, the CGI is the central character. Why would anyone care about a bunch of fake animals and a mumbling main character we know nothing about? And that's why this prequel doesn't work... it thinks that it can make 5 movies about 1920s NYC, the magic world and beasts. It fails to realize that HP succeeded because it was a family story about a boy who happened to live within a wizard world and had a whole epic plot centered on his family. The wizard world was the backdrop. Even the name "Fantastic Beasts" is a tip off that the screenwriters are clueless. Plots need protagonists and villains. We need a family, a motivation, emotion. Not bland characters chasing fake looking beasts. Ugh. Awful. Skip it!