[3.8/10] When watching the later Harry Potter films, I often thought to myself “Someone who hadn’t read the books first would be completely lost.” Important plot details, the depths of certain characters, even vital bits of lore were either compressed or entirely omitted for the adaptation to the screen. It was apt to leave the uninitiated movie muggles totally lost as to what was happening and why.

Well now I have the blessing and the curse to know how those viewers must have felt. *Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald* is a bewildering film. It is chock full of characters who barely get introduced and then are treated with the utmost importance, plot developments that seemingly happen by fiat, and mysteries that the audience has little reason to care about with reveals that give them none. Convoluted is too kind a word for it. It is a mystifying dose of cinematic flotsam that has occasional high points, but fails at even the most basic elements of coherence.

The first *Fantastic Beasts* had a similar feeling of several scenes and ideas haphazardly stitched together. But even then, the characters were fairly few, capably if not exactly memorably established, and the plot, while still a bit jumbed, was at least possible to follow. The sequel doubles down on each of these elements, tossing in scads of new, major characters, throwing in subplot after subplot, and making an utter hash out of what anyone and everyone’s motivation is at a given point in the movie.

The best you can say is that perhaps *Harry Potter* author J.K. Rowling, who wrote the screenplays for both *Fantastic Beasts* movies, should stick to novels. There are interesting ideas at play in *The Crimes of Grindelwald*. The titular villain issues a call to arms over the specter of World War II and the threat of muggles as impetuous beings about to gain power beyond their depth. The sense of his championing of liberation, of wizards not having to hide who they are because of outmoded customs, has resonance when Queenie and Jacob are denied the future they want because of those customs. And as always in the Potterverse, the presence or absence of love, and its effect on who we become, is still a potent throughline.

But condensed down to a screenplay for a two-hour movie instead of a five hundred-page book, Rowling and director David Yates can only graze this ideas. They are window dressing for a washed out tumble through scores of undifferentiated characters milling about the least appealing version of Paris you’ve ever seen, flanked by unconvincing CGI creatures at every turn. There isn’t room to flesh these ideas out, or do anything other than gesture toward them, when you have to fit multiple undercooked romances, several uninteresting mysteries, and even a few needless references to known faces and facts from the Wizarding World into this rudderless adventure.

And yet, the most compelling parts of the film are those connections to things past. I’m on record as not needing or wanting to see young Dumbledore, but Jude Law does nice work as the familiar character. He has that sense of combined whimsy and danger, that little twinkle in the eye, that Richard Harris and Michael Gambon brought to the role in the Potter films. He is believable as their antecedent, and carries that warmth paired with a certain mischievousness that makes him an enjoyable, if not exactly essential, addition to the *Fantastic Beasts* milieu.

Johnny Depp’s turn as Grindelwald is not entirely new, given his cameo at the end of the last film, and technically his character has been with us since the beginning of this series. But he is still something of a newcomer here, and while it pains me a bit to say it, his presence is also one of the film’s high points. While most of the feature sees him reduced to muttering bland portents, Grindelwald’s showcase scene sees him rallying a group of prospective followers to his cause. Depp assumes the role of charismatic tempter, launching reasonable-sounding arguments at an audience ready to eat them up. It’s in these moments that the film isn’t caught up in the briar patch of its own narrative dead ends, simply showing you the villain’s dark-tinged pitch, and it’s one of the few times in which *Fantastic Beasts 2* is capable of grabbing its audiences attention.

The others include a few visual highpoints. Grindelwald’s signal to his followers is an ever-moving drapery made of transparent blank satin turning to smoke that is both ominous and visually arresting. And when Creedence, the walking, talking MacGuffin goes full blown obscurus on one of the aurors, there’s a force and a terror to it that’s missing elsewhere. Otherwise, aesthetically the film aims for a severe sort of grayscale hyperrealism that loses the viewer in the uncanny when it tries to populate that same grimdark landscape with the titular fantastical creatures who are meant to add some fun and intrigue to the proceedings.

Still, the film’s visual shortcomings pale in comparison to its narrative shortfalls. Time and again while watching *Fantastic Beasts 2*, characters launch into expository monologues, or announce their feelings to round out some abortive love triangle, or fight and/or team up seemingly at random. Time and again, you will ask yourself, “Who are these people? Why are they doing this? And why should I care?” The film is worse than opaque -- it is confounding, assuming that the audience already knows or appreciates people and plots that the script barely takes the time to introduce or resolve.

Honestly, you are better off reading a wikipedia summary than watching *Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald*, because the movie seems to be based off of one. Perhaps, some day, J.K. Rowling will write a novelization of this film, one that has the time and the real estate to fully explore all of these characters and their relationships, to actually build up their conflicts and points of view, to give us the internal motivations that drive the otherwise impenetrable actions. Until then, all we have is this abbreviated, convoluted, incomprehensible mishmash of recognizable Wizard World odds and ends, less a film than a free-associative rant and ramble from someone who fell asleep watching *Harry Potter* on their Parisian vacation.