Fantastic beasts the secrets of dumbledore review mangy malaise

It doesn’t bode well for any film, let alone “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore,” a fantasy adventure that cost at least $200 million to produce, when its opening salvo—the scene that’s supposed to grab you, pull you in and prepare you for further delights—finds two grim-faced gents at a restaurant table staring at a pendant that contains drops of their blood and talking disconsolately about how they once loved each other and planned to reshape the world.

One of them is Albus Dumbledore, the Hogwarts headmaster played as a younger man by Jude Law. The other is his nemesis, the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald, who now wants to dominate the world. He was supposed to be played, as in the two previous installments of the franchise, by Johnny Depp, who left the role in the aftermath of a widely publicized libel suit. His replacement, Mads Mikkelsen, looks like he rues the day he signed the contract, and who can blame him? There’s nothing to play because there’s nothing of any interest in the character, or in the whole mysteriously turgid film.