How you approach a film like Fantastic Beasts, and whether you even like it or not, depends on your opinion of J.K. Rowling as a writer.  There’s seems to be no neutral ground on this.  If you’re a devoted fan, you’ll point to her gifts for character, her ability to compose interweaving plotlines together, and her stances on issues of social justice.

If you’re a critic, you’ll point to all the holes on her plot, perhaps her reliance on sentimentality, and her penchant for tinkering with her own canon.  What’s interesting is that she does have a genuine talent.  She’s just not so good at utilizing her strengths sometimes.  It’s obvious that Ms. Rowling has a tremendous respect for the genre of the “Fantastic”, yet she always struggles to find the proper expression for it.  One could also argue that there’s a conflict between her imagination and her sense of social conscience.  One displays her poetical to soar toward new imaginative heights on a constant basis, the other drags her down.  Instead of these two impulses aligning in perfect sync, which would be the ideal arrangement, the resulting schism means she’s forever earthbound.  The irony is that her talent is on better display in her Post-Potter realistic fiction, such the Cormoran Strike series.

For all these reasons, it’s a surprise to report that the first in what is promoted as a five film franchise is pretty good, for the most part.  The film tells the story of “magizoologist Newt Scamander and his exploits in 1926 New York.  His ostensible reason for being there is to deliver a magical endangered species into the wilds of Arizona.  The problems start when his traveling case with all the titular creatures in it is swapped by accident by an American muggle named Jake Kowalski.  The next thing he knows, Newt is unceremoniously dragged before the American magical law enforcement by Tina Goldstein.  An official at MACUSA (The Magical Congress of the United States of America), who has fallen from grace and who has become a nervous wreck in her attempts to win her way back into the good graces of President Seraphina Picquery.

The headache doesn’t end when Jacob accidentally sets the beasts loose, leaving him and Newt to embark on a scavenger hunt through the Big Apple.  Finally, there is something else loose in the city, an unidentified beast or something worse.  This something different, not a part of Newt’s menagerie, something that may be tied to the sinister New Salem Philanthropic society.  Before long, Newt will be called upon to do more than just reclaim a runaway zoo, and the consequences could mean war.

If that synopsis makes it sound like just another bloated blockbuster, then I apologize.  It wasn’t meant to be read like that.  Loyalty to the blockbuster model of business is Hollywood’s greatest handicap at the moment, and there are times, especially near the end, where it’s obvious Rowling had to bow down to multi-franchise dictates.  There is a big reveal at the end, which I won’t spoil here, that left me shaking my head.  It is moments like these that call to mind most of her greatest faults as a writer.  One almost wishes she had found some way of either penning a stand – alone film, or else taking things in a more creative direction, such as exploring the life of magic on the American continent.

However, all the events that went before the denouement show off her best strengths, and I’m left with at least a modest hope that these strengths will be brought to the foreground in this installment of Fantastic Beasts.