Saturday night the family went to see Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them a new movie related to the the Harry Potter series of books and movies. It is set in 1920’s New York City and is both a prequel and a spinoff of the Harry Potter series of movies. JK Rowling wrote the screenplay.
The movie opens with Newt Scamander, a student of magical beasts, getting off a ship in New York on his way to Arizona. He has a mysterious leather suitcase that contains a variety of magical creatures from tiny little twigs that can pick locks to huge critters bigger than an elephant. Poor Scamander stumbles into an precarious time for wizards as tensions are high between the magical world and the muggles (except in America muggles are called nomags).
And there are plots twists and budding romances and really bad guys and politicians and it is all really engrossing and very well done.
There is a huge amount of stuff out on Al Gore’s world wide interwebs about the relationship between this movie and the Harry Potter series and all the cross references and such. I am not going to get into it. I’m here to tell you that this is a good movie and you don’t really have to have any knowledge about the Harry Potter movies to see it.
Check out the movie web site. Lots of good stuff there including an opportunity to make cool animated wanted posters.
