By Susan JAMES

Know this, fellow Potterites. Warner Bros.’ new exploration of Harry Potter’s magical world in “Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them” assumes that you’re familiar with previous Potter mythology. If you know your nifflers from your bowtruckles and your muggles from your squibs, if you know a good apparition when you see one, then there won’t be a problem. If you don’t, go see it with a friend who can explain these things to you. You’ll thank me later.

Directing his fifth adventure in Pottermania, David Yates has created an exciting visual experience for fans if one a little light on plot. We have camera angles that soar through the towers of New York as if they were moving staircases and magical creatures that suddenly flick by in colors that light up the screen. Working from a script by J.K. Rowling, the movie benefits greatly from the production designs of the incomparable Stuart Craig, who created the look of the Potter world in the original movies. With the original author, a matching look and the same director at the helm, it’s easy to imagine being back in the magical world although it’s 1926, 70 years before The Boy Who Lived was born, and the story takes place in New York rather than in the more familiar environs of Hogwarts.

In 2001 to raise money for a British charity, Rowling wrote the small book or bestiary, a kind of encyclopedia of creatures, on which the movie is based. It’s a sketchy foundation from which to craft a plot and unfortunately it shows. There are a number of things going on, multiple explosions, fantastically conceived CGI beasties, a couple of villains and some interesting characters but even with borrowings from the dark world of Oliver Twist, none of it really gels into the kind of nuanced, richly detailed storyline for which Rowling has become famous. Eddie Redmayne plays the shy, self-deprecating magical naturalist Newt Scamander, who is traveling to New York from London on a secret mission to release an extremely large fantastical eagle back into its native Arizona habitat. Magical creatures are banned in the U.S. by MACUSA, the American ministry of magic, so when Newt’s suitcase is accidentally switched with one belonging to a non-magical, would-be baker named Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler), things quickly get out of hand. Fogler is one of the best things in the movie and the humor of his performance does a great deal to alleviate the movie’s overall grimness.

Running under the story of Newt, Kowalski, and Newt’s escaping pets is a darker subplot taken from the original Potter saga of the precursor to Voldemort, Gellert Grindelwald, a case study in how arrogance and narcissism can lead to the creation of true evil. Here Rowling has used the earlier themes surrounding Ariana Dumbledore, a child forced to suppress his true potential (in this case magical ability) resulting in unimaginable damage.

This movie is no candy-colored riff on the thrill and wonder of magical abilities.  This is the magical world just before the fall of the Ministry of Magic – tense, worried, shot in subdued monotones. Both worlds, magical and muggle, produce cruelty and repression but for lovers of the Potter stories, there is enough here to make another visit worthwhile.

See you at the movies!

  susan james