Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is a spinoff of the Harry Potter franchise and set before the events of the Harry Potter films. The film follows the in-universe writer Newt Scamander on his trip to America. It taking place in another country brings a change to the atmosphere and the focus on magical beasts shows potential. Unfortunately, the film ends up being derivative and extremely bland with poor pacing. The heavy reliance on CGI that isn't that great to begin with, severely hurts the scenes and the beasts aren't fantastic at all. Their designs does not feel like much effort has gone into them. The characters are uninteresting and the plot is predictable. There are too many scenes which bloat the film causing it to feel like it is overly long. There are no surprises and the way the wizards and witches fight is different to what we have seen before such that it feels like it is breaking the rules which had already been set in the previous films. While fans of the universe will find something to enjoy, it does not add enough to the universe to be addictive, and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them feels like something with the intention to milk the franchise for all its worth.
