Review: 'The Secrets of Dumbledore' moves the Wizarding World forward a bit, but is mostly spinning its wheels

One imagines director David Yates, who with “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore” has now helmed seven movies in J.K. Rowling’s fantasy realm — er, Wizarding World™ — with diminishing returns, waking up from a butterbeer hangover and mumbling to himself, like Martin Sheen’s character in “Apocalypse Now,” “I’m still only in Hogwart’s.”

The third installment in the prequel series to Rowling’s “Harry Potter” saga has fixed some of the problems of the terrible second chapter, “The Crimes of Grindelwald” — but still has a way to go to justify its existence beyond a money machine aimed at the fans who will shell out for anything that drops the word “Hufflepuff” in the script occasionally.

The new film picks up pretty much where the last one did, with Gellert Grindelwald amassing his army of wizards and witches, to carry out his plot to give magical folk dominion over the Muggle-centered world. Key to this plan is to groom brooding young Credence (Ezra Miller) for a mission to kill the one wizard Grindelwald cannot act against himself: Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law). 

A note here about the casting of Grindelwald. At the end of the first “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” and through the second film, the villain was played by Johnny Depp. After headlines about Depp’s private life (which people can argue about on their own time), he was replaced by the great Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen, who brings a pleasantly patrician air to the character’s evil scheming.

Alas, the series is still saddled with Eddie Redmayne, mumbling and stumbling through the role of “magizoologist” Newt Scamander. Newt is again enlisted by Dumbledore, his old Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, to help thwart Grindelwald’s plans. For reasons that are overexplained eventually, a creature that Newt pursues early in the film becomes a significant part of the story.

Joining Newt in Dumbledore’s Army 1.0 are his brother, Theseus Scamander (Callum Turner), American charms professor Eulalia “Lally” Hicks (Jessica Williams), Newt’s lovestruck assistant Bunty (Victoria Yeates), French-Senegalese wizard Yusuf Kama (William Nadylam), and New York baker — and Newt’s no-maj friend — Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler). Their plan is to have no plan, to attack in as many surprising ways as possible to keep Grindelwald from predicting their next move. 

Complicating their efforts is Grindelwald’s newest minion, telepath Queenie Goldstein (Alison Sudol) — who is also Jacob’s lost love. (The whereabouts of Queenie’s sister Tina — the American auror played in the first two films by Katherine Waterston — are left a mystery for most of the movie.)

The script — by Rowling, with a severe rewrite by Steve Kloves, who adapted most of the Potter books — works double-time to insert Newt and his animal expertise into the story, though his scenes tend to be goofier than anything else happening. The main story, which deals with Grindelwald’s rise to power, is laden with allusions to current authoritarian politics, while Kloves finally lets Dumbledore make a declaration of love that Rowling never permitted in her books.

The series, though, is still circling when it needs to get to the point. If Warner Bros. lets the franchise wrap up the story according to canon — starting the First Wizarding War, which means the eventual rise of Lord Voldemort — maybe we’ll get movies that are more payoff than set-up.

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‘Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, April 15, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for some fantasy action/violence. Running time: 142 minutes.