| Warner Bros. Pictures | Release Date: April 15, 2022 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
13
Mixed:
28
Negative:
8
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Critic Reviews
ColliderApr 15, 2022
Instead of having to explain this universe, The Secrets of Dumbledore can let us sit with these characters reckoning with the loves they’ve lost in quiet and gentle ways, create a captivating and often hilarious action sequence with a multitude of beasts, or explore the history of Dumbledore’s family with subtlety.
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Apr 13, 2022
The third of the five planned prequels is a relatively lightweight but still consistently entertaining and magical journey that rights the ship after the utter convoluted disaster titled “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” (2018) and feels more connected to the larger HPU (Harry Potter Universe).
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Apr 5, 2022
The third installment of director David Yates’ “Harry Potter” period prequel series still is overstuffed with characters and subplots, yet polishes a few missteps from previous films. There’s a renewed emphasis on magical creatures and another decidedly political bent to the franchise as it digs into dark themes and offers a bewitching goofy side.
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The PlaylistApr 5, 2022
It can be said, with some certainty, that ‘Fantastic Beasts’ has finally found its footing. This latest entry is the most fun and most buoyant in the relatively young series. And it’s enough to make you actually look forward to a subsequent installment (should there be one) instead of actively dreading it.
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Apr 14, 2022
This is the most absorbing and well-paced film in the trilogy to date, despite its nearly two-and-a-half-hour running time — de rigueur for modern spectacles that want to convince audiences they’re getting enough bang for their buck. “Secrets of Dumbledore” gestures toward themes of frailty, thwarted intentions and forgiveness.
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Apr 8, 2022
Dumbledore feels like an improvement, at least, on the joyless, enervating slog of 2018's Crimes of Grindelwald; it's nimbler and sweeter and more cohesive in its storyline. And the cast, less trapped in a fug of half-formed symbolism and subplots, are allowed realer and more romantic stakes.
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Apr 5, 2022
Despite the well-honed wizarding credentials of Yates and co-scripters Steve Kloves and Rowling, the series still can’t seem to settle on a hero. Let’s hope that the prospective next two helpings can unravel whether it’s Newt’s beast-fuelled journey or Dumbledore’s quest with which we’re hitching a ride.
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Apr 5, 2022
Even at its weakest, the Potterverse – with its magic, mayhem, and world class ability to create imaginary worlds of epic sweep and a million tiny details – retains its transportive power. Go see this one at the cinema where the big screen and sound will wrap you in a warm, magical duvet of delight.
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Apr 13, 2022
A moviegoer has to be a scholar in the now-convoluted cosmology that powers these Potterverse expansion-pack prequels or abandon all hope of understanding a fraction of what’s happening — and even a lot of die-hard Harryheads may find their hippocampus getting seriously taxed while trying to catch up.
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Apr 5, 2022
The most bewildering thing about The Secrets Of Dumbledore is how superfluous each of its ideas feel in relationship to one another. There are countless globe-trotting international characters, worlds-within-worlds, and constantly competing historical, political, and mythological references, but they all fizzle because their ill-considered stakes never seem fully realized.
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IndieWireApr 5, 2022
The series’ third outing, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, falls into precisely the same traps as its predecessor, offering up an unwieldy, mostly unsettling mash-up of adult themes and childish whimsy, made still more inscrutable by too many subplots, too many characters, and a tone that veers wildly off-course at every possible turn.
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Apr 5, 2022
Through it all the technical work remains of the highest quality. It seems a shame that Stuart Craig and Neil Lamont’s lavish production design and Colleen Atwood’s gorgeous costumes – both leaning into unreal golden-era Hollywood – are wasted on such an emotionally unengaging slog.
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Apr 13, 2022
It feels like a bad parody, a shadow of what a film is, not an actual film itself. The color palette is a dreary mud puddle of grays and browns, and there’s no sense of space or geography. It has no weight, no heft, no texture, no color, no sense of magic or wonder in the least. The story itself has no sense of stakes or resonance, and the actors vary in affect from lifeless to dutiful to pained.
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