J.K Rowling has once again let us into her wizarding world; if only just a peek, it was a fantastic sight to behold.

Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them is a film based on a book Rowling wrote in 2001 as a little Easter egg for the original series about owning a copy of the textbook Harry had to use in his magical classes.

However, this movie is not anything like a textbook. It is a full-fledged narrative, and a well written one at that. The story is set 70 years before the story of Harry Potter.

While the movie has a few connections to the series, it is stressed that you do not need to have a full expansive knowledge of the earlier books and/or movies to fully understand and appreciate this one.

The story is centered around Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) a British wizard who comes to New York as just a stop on his journey to Arizona to return one of his more important beasts.

Scamander is carrying around a seemingly bland briefcase but is really enchanted to have an entire magical kennel to house his beasts while keeping up with their needs.

While attempting to cross New York, a small rodent-like creature escapes Newt’s possession and wreaks havoc in a bank where he meets Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler), a Muggle or a No-Maj (the American word for someone who has no magical powers) who gets swept up into Scamander’s adventure.

This is a big no-no in the wizarding world so it attracts attention from the wizarding government. An officer of wizarding law called an Auror named Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston) and her sister Queenie (Alison Sudol) take notice of Scamander’s activity and also eventually get involved in the mystery of the obscurus.

One of the best things about this movie is finally being able to see other parts of this world. Up until this point we never saw hide nor hare of any kind of American magic. We even learned about the big wizarding school Ilvermorny.

It was also a great move to have a British main character in this uncharted territory. Some of the banter with the American leads, like the arguing about which is a better school, Hogwarts or Ilvermorny, was very amusing and interesting.

The overall storyline is very put together and still has that sense of realism that only Rowling can put into a world where a man can walk into his briefcase. However, it felt just a bit rushed, as we didn’t get to see too much connection with some of the characters and then they just pretend to be a tightly knit group when in reality there wasn’t much to bring them all together.

One of the things critics raved about in the Harry Potter series was that the books slowly got darker as the characters matured, meaning kids could quite literally grow up with Harry. This movie picked up where the last movie did in terms of darkness and seriousness.

This is shown by displaying important and touchy topics like domestic abuse, death, and a pinch of religion. Just a pinch. This worked for most of the viewers since most likely the audience will be people who were part of Harry’s adventure and are mature enough to handle it.

That being said, this movie is not super appropriate for anyone under 10-11 range.

The acting was very good all around. While the New York accents were a little over-dramatic for some of the actors, it was not that awful.

The lowest point of this movie is the lack of actual magic that is used. While the main focus is obviously the creatures, it is obvious the producers threw a lot of money at the design of them and virtually nothing for any of the spells that were cast. Almost every spell used was a pale blue light at the end of a wand.

Overall, Fantastic Beasts was a roaring success and had expanded the beloved world in an exciting new chapter. I give it 8.5/10 and 4 stars. The acting and the story was superb, with a lack of some key visual effects and a rushed but polished story line keeping it from being a near-perfect movie.