'Fantastic Beasts' reviews are in: What critics think of J.K. Rowling's first screenplay

LOS ANGELES -- Magic is finicky, isn't it?

According to all our modern wizarding lore, be it Harry Potter, Doctor Strange or otherwise, you have to nail the incantations, swirl your hands just right and land the flourish perfectly to make the spell work.

Does Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them do the trick?

Ehhhhhh, yes and no.

The sight of the beasts themselves is indeed fantastic, as is the lavish '20s New York that director David Yates presents, according to the first wave of critics who published reviews Saturday night (many of whom appear to be Harry Potter experts standing in for their respective outlets' regular reviewers).

As to whether J.K. Rowling's "prequelized" Fantastic characters and world-building live up to her zillion-selling novels and subsequent Warner Bros. blockbusters ... that appears to be up to the rest of the new five-film franchise.

Because while this was an OK start, it's no Harry Potter. Yet.

Mashable will have its own review soon, but until then, here are some major themes we found around the internet this weekend:

Many critics were underwhelmed

Jason Solomons, TheWrap:

What really disappoints is that where Harry Potter and his films felt entirely original, there’s a "franchise-y" feel to "Fantastic Beasts." It has the now-predictable rhythms of a Marvel origins movie -- New York again gets destroyed in a climactic barrage of special effects.

Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly:

So why does Fantastic Beasts feel so oddly lifeless? Why doesn't it cast more of a spell? First, there are the performances, which aside from Redmayne's are surprisingly flat. And second, the thinness of the source material gives the whole film a slightly padded feeling.

Joshua Yehl, IGN:

While the beasts are indeed fantastic, watching Newt and his new group of friends round them up just isn't as entertaining or compelling as Harry, Ron and Hermione running around Hogwarts. ... That the group never quite clicks together in the right way is a huge reason the rest of the movie doesn’t find its footing.

Eddie Redmayne was fine as Newt Scamander, but we need to see more before we can judge

John DeFore, The Hollywood Reporter:

Eddie Redmayne makes an ideal Newt Scamander, who is endearingly sheepish around humans but gifted with the nifflers, bowtruckles, erumpents and so forth to whom the pic's title refers.

Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian:

It's a lovely performance from Eddie Redmayne who is a pretty fantastic beast himself. There’s a moment when he has to "whisper" an errant animal into submission and his contortions would put Andy Serkis to shame.

J.K. Rowling did an OK job on her first whole-cloth screenplay...

Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly:

Rowling, who also wrote the script, nimbly lays out her world, but that world isntt nearly as rich as the world of Hogwarts. And the villains (chief among them Colin Farrell’s Percival Graves) are stock cinematic baddies. Fantastic Beasts is two-plus hours of meandering eye candy that feels numbingly inconsequential.

Matt Goldberg, Collider:

Rather than take us through another hero’s journey arc, Rowling wants to take her audience to a different era with timely conflicts. Director David Yates helps provide a cohesive vision, and Rowling brings us an endearing cast of characters that we’ll want to follow on new adventures.

Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian:

It's a very Rowling universe, dense with fun, but always taking its own jeopardy very seriously and effortlessly making you do the same. The Beasts movies may actually make clearer Rowling's under-discussed debt to Roald Dahl. They also show that her universe with its exotic fauna is in the best way, a cousin to that of George Lucas.

Peter DeBruge, Variety:

Rowling, whose world-building skills are rivaled only by George Lucas, appears to be primarily concerned with plot at this point, and Goldstein's memories serve the story, while this two-plus-hour-plus pilot evidently doesn't leave much room for the sort of character detail we'd all like to get about Scamander.

...And she took plenty of cues from the political landscape

John DeFore, The Hollywood Reporter:

Much of the film's big wizarding-politics material will be appreciated mostly by those who thirst for ever more backstory in Rowling's universe. It will doubtless be useful as the franchise progresses, though -- the main villain, Gellert Grindelwald, makes the kind of teasing appearance at the end that promises a long Voldemort-like story arc.

Matt Goldberg, Collider:

These kinds of themes -- acceptance, social divisions, and bigotry -- are as crucial to Rowling’s wizarding world as wands, spells, and apparating. That’s what makes her stories special. She didn’t just come up with a fun tale where people with magical powers live among us. The social commentary has always been a part of her writing, and it’s in the foundation for Fantastic Beasts.

Peter DeBruge, Variety:

"Fantastic Beasts" does double-duty as yet another imagination-tickling fantasy adventure and a deeply troubled commentary on tolerance, fear, and bigotry in the world today. ... Though Rowling takes the opportunity to introduce a few tolerance-oriented messages, one can’t help but question the limits of the allegory: In the real world, bigots don’t have a real reason to hate members of other races and religions, whereas wizards -- however much we love them -- pose a very real threat to normal people (grisly Obscurus attacks result in at least two deaths, and the destruction of large swaths of New York). It’s the same logical flaw that operates in both the Avengers and X-Men franchises, and Rowling doesn't have much to add … yet.

So of course it's very, very dark in spots...

Joshua Yehl, IGN:

Newt and company get into increasingly large amounts of trouble with the American magical authority known as the MACUSA while trying to round up the beasts, and all the while a much darker, more dreary plot unfolds

Peter DeBruge, Variety:

Just when you thought the world of Harry Potter couldn't get any darker, along comes a bleak-as-soot spin-off that makes the earlier series look like kids' stuff.

...But let's face it -- it's no Harry Potter. Yet

Matt Goldberg, Collider:

The one drawback is that it looks like, as of right now, Fantastic Beasts will be a franchise without a strong central protagonist like Harry Potter. There’s nothing particularly wrong with Newt, and I’m glad that he's not a Harry-rehash. He's kind of awkward and seems far more comfortable with his creatures than he does with other people.