Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald Review - 5 Ups & 7 Downs

6. It's A Lazy, Generic Sequel

The biggest worry with Rowling promising five Fantastic Beasts movies from the outset was that there would be a few mediocre filler ones among the bunch, and that's certainly the case with this second outing.

The laziness comes thick and fast from the outset, with a number of the previous film's climactic events and revelations quickly being undone like they meant nothing in the first place.

It's no spoiler to say that within the first few scenes, Grindelwald has escaped his confinement, Jacob's (Dan Fogler) obliviation has been quickly hand-waived and Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller) is back from the dead.

The rest of the movie isn't much better, with a totally insubstantial plot which busily leaps around without actually doing much of real consequence. It's simply a holding pattern of a film intended to serve as a distraction until things can get more interesting in two or three movies' time.

It is exactly what everybody feared when this franchise was first announced.