I am disappointed even more than after watching the first installment. I hoped the movie makers learned from their mistakes. I expected an interesting plot about Dumbledore and Grindewald, and yes, I wanted to follow an actual plot! But boy, did I want too much? In recent years it certainly seems so.

It is hard to see which from the many plots is the main one. Sure it is named The Crimes of Grindelwald but there is actually very little happening around him. I saw at least 6 story lines which includes the two lovestories, saving the animals, Dumbledore's struggle against ministry, Grindelwald and his vague plan to enlist this Credence guy and Credence's struggle to learn about his past together with Nagini (?). All in all we are presented many characters with many twisted interconnections which are very hard to follow and totally distract from the main and cool stuff, which at least for me was supposed to be the interactions between Dumbledore and Grindelwald and them performing some great magic. I couldn't care less about love stories or shallow sidestories of characters I barely got to know.

And although there are so many characters, there is hardly anything substantial happening on the screen. It is all just sidequests combined with jokes kinda leading to an awkward finale (oh yes, Nazis again). Basically nothing of substance happens between Dumbledore and Grindelwald and Grindelwald hardly does any crimes except for trying hard to be Hitler. And at the end you are presented with a bait to watch the next installment, of course.

The jokes are much more forced than in the first movie. I had the feeling the movie makers desperately wanted to sell this movie both to children and adults, but there are way too many "story"lines and characters for children to follow and the tone is not serious enough for adults. They try to make the tone darker but every now and then interrupt it with outta place silly jokes. Not good.

Also the references felt like being thrown at us without a thought. Yes they show Hogwarts, but they totally lack the magical atmosphere known from HP. They show Dumbledore teaching, but it is a total rip off of Lupin's lecture. Why do they even try to include McGonagall? Or Nagini?

All summed up, this movie is a money grab and unfortunately not an exception in today's movie making full of plotless movies. I read somewhere that there will be 5 Fantastic Beasts films in total. If that is true doesn't matter. A movie this long needs to be good by itself, not just a particle which doesn't make sense on its own. Avoid if you can, and stick to the HP movies.