Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore  ★★★

STILL yearning for a regular fix of Harry Potter?

Unfortunately it’s not to be, with the original cast all grown up and that lightning firmly stuck in its bottle.

Fans must contend with the side project, set decades earlier than the first Harry Potter, and now in its third instalment – Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.

Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them arrived in 2016, five years after the last Harry Potter entry. It was followed by The Crimes of Grindelwald in 2018.

While enjoyable, the first Fantastic Beasts film seemed unable to recapture the Potter magic, mainly I think down to the fact that it was dealing with adults rather than children.

But any so-called ‘Wizarding World’ entry is apparently better than none and Beasts I was a commercial success.

I missed The Crimes of Grindelwald which is unfortunate because it would have helped my understanding of the characters and events in the third instalment.

But, even for an ignorant muggle like me, the pieces eventually slotted together by the end.

Eddie Redmayne again plays the reluctant hero Newt Scamander who is called into service by his mentor, the younger version of Albus Dumbledore, played in these films by Jude Law.

Newt and his band of helpers have to thwart the efforts of the evil wizard Gellert Grindelwald who is intent on using violence to create chaos out of which he plans to lead a New World Order where wizards are in charge and humans live in servitude.

The story is set in the 1930s in a world where wizards and muggles, or plain old humans, co-exist peacefully, either ignorant of each other or occasionally interacting.

This and subsequent planned films are meant to follow the lead-up to World War II, but how this will fit into the cautionary story of the Hitler-like Grindelwald has again got me a little confused.

Maybe in this universe Grindelwald becomes Hitler? That could fit; after all the evil dictator was known to be fascinated by the dark arts.

Anyway, one of the best choices for The Secrets of Dumbledore is the re-casting of Mads Mikkelsen as Grindelwald.

As usual, the Dane dominates his scenes, taking over from Johnny Depp, who played the character in the last film. In contrast Eddie Redmayne adopts his cloying persona that can become quite irritating.

Law is fine, if a little bland, as Dumbledore, but Ezra Miller as one of Grindelwald’s henchmen and Dan Fogler, reprising his role as muggle baker Jacob Kowalski, are the best of the supports.

The special effects vary widely, from excellent to awkward, and the fantastic beasts mostly just pop up every now and then to entertain the younger viewers.

The franchise is spinning its wheels a little at the moment, but fans won’t be disappointed and they have two more films planned.