Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

Stars: Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Johnny Depp, Jude Law, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol, Ezra Miller, Zoe Kravitz, Carmen Ejogo, Claudia Kim, Callum Turner, Kevin Guthrie

Director: David Yates

More effects-laden magical adventures of wizard Newt Scamander - played with commendable gusto and a straight face by Redmayne - who is needed when Depp's bizarrely-bleached- featured Dark Wizard Grindelwald escapes from imprisonment (just as inevitably as Michael Myers in Halloween) and sets about gathering followers to join him in raising merry hell, most of them unsuspecting of his true agenda - to raise pure-blood wizards to rule over the world's luckless non-non-magical beings.

Fortunately for such beings (and ensuring the threatened sequels to Rowling's Wizarding World), Newt's former Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore (Law) persuades Newt to sort out Depp and save Mankind.

Cue a tidal wave of Oscar-worthy special effects that create everything from bizarre monsters to strange skies and worse.
Director Yates, armed with brave if largely anonymous cast, a patently massive budget and magnificent movie magic, delivers a feast of merry monsters, weird and wonderful settings and enough magical action to ensure lovers of spectacle and fans of Rowling's 'otherworld' imagination will have a ball.

Alan Frank

USA/UK 2018. UK Distributor: Warner Brothers. Colour.
127 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 12A.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 0, Violence/Horror 1, Drugs 0, Swearing 0.

Review date: 16 Mar 2019

DVD review