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Quickie Review: Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore

This has to be a quickie review because I don’t want to get into trouble with the Wizarding World and all you muggles out there who pay close attention to all things related to Harry Potter. I’m merely an occasional visitor to the Potter universe and have not (gasp!) read the books. So I view and review these films through the lens of a casual observer with limited insight into the interwoven subplots and backstories that take place over the course of many decades. The Secrets of Dumbledore is the third film in the “Harry Potter” prequel series, following Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) and Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018). There may be a fourth, and even a fifth depending on how the sci-fi fantasy fanbase takes to this latest adventure sprung from the mind of outspoken, best-selling author J.K. Rowling. If I had to take a ‘wild’ guess, I’d predict more Beasts ahead.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them should satisfy all those eager to revisit the magical world created by Harry Potter scribe J.K. Rowling. It’s a fun, fantastical ride that sets the stage for a whole new series of characters and adventures — supposedly four more films’ worth. Eddie Redmayne (The Danish Girl, The Theory of Everything, Les Miz) is endearing as Newt Scamander, a shaggy magizoologist who inadvertently lets several magical creatures loose into 1920s NYC and must get them back into his bottomless suitcase (it must be made of the same stuff as Hermione’s bottomless bag) before all of New York catches on to the city’s secret world of witches and wizards. Harry will read all about it some 70 years later while studying at Hogwarts. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. In this story, Harry doesn’t exist yet. Fantastic Beasts is a spin-off in reverse. A prequel of sorts. Here’s the gist: