Fantastic Beasts And Where to Find Them (12A)

THERE is a great irony about this big screen return to the wizarding world of JK Rowling. Whereas, over eight Harry Potter films, a tale focused on children became dark, dramatic and lost all sense of fun, here’s a story involving adults that has sweetness and zest and really does feel like magic.

The germ of the idea lies in the old series, namely the eponymous Hogwarts textbook, whose imagined pages have given Rowling plenty of new material. The book’s fictional author now comes centre-stage.

Eddie Redmayne is Newt Scamander, the very English wizard and self-styled magizoologist, who roams the world researching magical creatures and, in the case of the endangered ones, protecting them in the eco-system that exists inside his Tardis-like leather case.

It’s 1926. When Scamander arrives in New York he finds that, unlike in Britain, America’s wizards keep their existence entirely secret from the No-Majs, or Muggles, lest knowledge of them leads to war. As an invisible force starts to destroy parts of the city, and the puritanical New Salemers start talking of witches, the Magical Congress is concerned. So when some of Newt’s beasties escape from his case, it only makes matters worse.

As Newt tries to find his animals, and the wizard police try to arrest him, it’s all a distraction from the wizard’s security chief – but clearly dastardly – Percival Graves (Colin Farrell), who wants nothing more than his fellow wizards to be forced to war.

While the plot is busy and entertaining, the film’s heart is the quartet of outsiders who bond in the melee: Newt, the wizard sisters Tina and Queenie Goldstein (Katherine Waterston and Alison Sudol) and the No-Maj baker Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler). Tina’s an out-of-favour wizard investigator who initially believes that catching Newt will win her favour, Queenie a carefree mind-reader, and Jacob the man whose wide-eyed introduction to the magical realm represents our own.

But most eyes will be on Redmayne, after his back-to-back star turns in The Theory Of Everything and The Danish Girl. It’s becoming apparent that the actor has an awkward, distracted air that he applies to all his characterisations, and it’s becoming a little over-familiar. Nevertheless, the tics suit a character who’s more comfortable with animals than humans, and his Newt slowly grows on you.

This is the first film not to be based on a Rowling book, and also the first to be scripted by the author herself. The combination of those two factors seems to have been liberating for all concerned. There is a freshness and vitality here, the sense that the story is coming alive on screen. It’s funny (Newt’s more eccentric creatures), creepy (Samantha Morton’s Salem-mad puritan and her clan), exciting and also sweetly romantic, as attraction works its way into the quartet’s appealing chemistry.

Potter old hand David Yates seems to relish the new terrain. He and his designers recreate 1920s New York beautifully. And there’s something muscular and enjoyably matter-of-fact about the way these adult wizards display their skills, the wand action dispensed with none of the novelty one felt every time a child did something impressive.

The film luxuriates in script and visual detail, whether Newt’s announcement that he made a postal application for his wand permit, the magical preparation of a strudel, or the sisters conjuring cocktail dresses before they enter a speakeasy that is more colourfully illicit than most.

At the same time, the fear of difference throughout the film gives it particular resonance in today’s racially intolerant climate. Though as Newt characteristically puts it: “Worrying means that you suffer twice.”

Also released

Indignation (15)

The second Philip Roth adaptation in two weeks, following Ewan McGregor’s American Pastoral, this is narrower in scope but much more satisfying. It’s 1951. While his friends are conscripted to fight in Korea, the studious son of a Kosher butcher goes to university, where his good intentions are tested by love and clashes with the college dean. Stalwart indie film producer James Schamus directs for the first time with aplomb, offering a wryly humorous, poignant tale of promise undone by fateful choices.

Gimme Danger (15)

Jim Jarmusch directs this documentary about the legendary godfathers of punk, The Stooges. It’s a pretty straightforward rise and fall biography of a group who were anything but conventional themselves. Led by Iggy Pop, a man who never performed with his shirt on and insisted on song lyrics of no more than 25 words, the Stooges were blisteringly individual, yet almost comically wayward. Unsurprisingly, Pop is the star interviewee, with arch memories of the time and very acute summaries of his friends’ talents.