At first I thought the negative reviews for Crimes of Grindelwald might just have been critical, but now that I’ve seen it, I can understand how this movie has been hurt by its overabundance of story. Even the first Fantastic Beasts movie had a hard time deciding if it was about Newt Scamander and his beasts, or about the Goldstein sisters, and ended up being more about what seemed like a side plot at the time with Credence Barebone and his anti-wizard mother. Now in the second instalment, they have not only brought back all those storylines from the first movie, but added additional ones about Newt’s brother the auror, one about Leta Lestrange (who has a relationship with both brothers), some of young Dumbledore and his past, and even Nagini the snake (who is at this point still a human — surprise!). While the movie is still a wonder of world-building and creative design and art direction, I could barely keep up with who’s who and why I should care.

From what I could piece together (and understand that it’s not as easy as you may think after I’ve only seen the movie once), like everyone else, Grindelwald wants to find Credence Barebone (the boy with the crazy-cloud-of-black-magic-that-kills from the first movie) to help further his plans to have the magical world rise up against the non-magical. Meanwhile, the odd rom-com elements also continue with Queenie and Jacob in an odd situation where he’s got his memories and she’s enchanted him to stay with her; and Tina Goldstein is not with Newt because of a silly misunderstanding, thinking that he’s engaged to his former love, Leta Lestrange. We have also got younger Dumbledore involved in the story, given his past with Grindelwald and his prominence in the magical society. Then there’s also something going on involving Leta Lestrange and her family’s past as well (apparently something happened to her brother). There are many threads to follow, leaving me with many questions after watching.

I don’t know if part of the problem is that JK Rowling is writing the script, and perhaps she’s more used to plotting out a novel over many chapters than squeezing it into only a two-hour movie every couple of years. It takes time to tell a person’s story, and it also takes time to teach viewers new aspects about the magical world. There are many details both large and small where it feels like Rowling had fun thinking of them and adding them to the magical world (for example, there’s a special guy that Newt goes to in order to get from England to France when he’s under a travel ban) but we don’t get any backstory or context around these details because there is just not enough screen time. If it had been in a novel, there could have been a couple of pages about him and what kind of character he might be.

Despite the chaos of this film, I really enjoy Jude Law as Dumbledore. Ever since he played Dickie Greenleaf in The Talented Mr. Ripley, there’s been no doubt that the guy’s got charisma. I wish we could have just focused on the backstory of people we already knew and loved from the Harry Potter movies. As a bonus, because of Dumbledore’s involvement, we even get to go back to Hogwart’s (there’s even a flashback to Newt’s school days there), which was delightful. In contrast to how much I enjoyed Law, I didn’t love Johnny Depp as Grindelwald (what is with that one creepy eye). Because Depp always likes to play his characters a little unhinged, I got less a sense of what Grindelwald’s character is really like. He just comes across as your typical megalomaniacal psychopath. Nevertheless, he still did a nice job at the climactic rally scene, and he makes a much more convincing villain than Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort.

Much has been made about the character of Nagini, who resembles an Asian woman (played by an Asian actress) until she transforms into the snake we know and loathed. A stink was made about how she should not have been made an Asian character because of the cultural stereotype. Being Asian myself, I don’t think that’s the problem. I think it’s just a very lame character. She hardly does anything and I don’t know why they bothered to include her. Perhaps she will have more story in the future instalments (I’m assuming there will be some alluding to how she got connected to Voldemort himself).

Finally, the fantastic beasts are pretty good. The little gold digging platypus (aka the niffler) is back and has a pivotal role, as well the bowtruckle (i.e. the little twig creature) is also back as Newt’s almost Disney-esque sidekick. Some cool new ones include an undersea seaweed horse creature known as a kelpie, a giant Chinese cat creature called a zouwu (though I was really confused as to how this creature got out into the streets of Paris), and some baddie big black cats (known as matagot) guarding the French Ministry of Magic. I’m glad that they added these wondrous creatures into the movie, and would have loved to have seen more about fantastic beasts, but ironically there just wasn’t any room in the plot.

In the end, this movie feels very much like a middle-of-the-story chapter, and unless you’re committed to following the overall plot threads, you will find it confusing and unsatisfying, like me. It might be a better plan to just watch it together with the first movie, or maybe even the next movie, when they all come home on digital. Now all I’ve got is a lot of questions (some which are probably answered in the movie) and a long wait for answers. (3 out of 5).