MovieChat Forums > Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) Discussion > Lots of special fx - little story - long...

Lots of special fx - little story - long - boring.

posted 7 years ago by sunama (28)
2 replies | jump to latest

So, I watched this today.
The story itself was a borefest.
To me it felt like this was a portfolio for a special fx company, looking to advertise for their next movie project.

SFX are great when they add to the story, but when there is CGI on the screen, constantly, for almost no apparent reason, it gets tiresome. There is virtually no story or character development to speak of, because 95% of the time, there is some huge/loud and overly long SFX taking place on screen, preventing us from connecting to the characters.

If I didn't know any better, I'd say that this movie was funded the SFX company, so that they could get other movie projects to work on, off the back of this.

And lets not get started on the main character, who comes across as a buffoon who can barely speak coherently. Now, I've seen Redmayne talk before and he is "normal", but in this movie, he comes across as an imbecile.

I didn't care for the creatures. I didn't care for the goodies or the baddies.
In fact, they could've made this as a non-speaking movie, where only sound effects are heard.

I gave this 1/10, because it was so horrendously bad.

[–] Lucas (24) 7 years ago

Are you for real? The longest "huge/loud and overly long SFX" in the whole movie is 2 minutes of the Obscurus flying around New York.

[–] Taffybird (18) 7 years ago

I think I liked it better than 1/10, but I agree with many of your criticisms. I'm a huge HP fan, but the reason I love it is that it has a phenomenal story to get absorbed in. I wondered how a small reference book would make an entertaining film and sure enough, it was very light on plot and character development.

I did enjoy spotting the creatures that I'd heard of but there was such an enormously irritating plot-hole it rather spoilt it for me. If Scamander was the rescuer and temporary custodian of a colossal, magical thunderbird...wouldn't he have thought to mention it in his book? Maybe there'll be an explanation for this glaring omission in future films.

It definitely relied heavily on arresting visuals, and the lack of interesting story had me almost nodding off twice. Also...and I hate to say this because I normally love Eddie Redmayne...I thought there were some very odd choices of actor for the lead roles. Dan Fogler's was the only performance I'd consider even slightly memorable.