Movie Nation

So, Christmas comes twice this year.

Or are we just talking about Santa?

Billy Bob Thornton revisits his most infamous role with “Bad Santa 2,” reprising the foul-mouthed, safe-cracking,anal-sex obsessed loser who discovers the true meaning of Christmas from a kid he keeps calling a “re-tard.”

Yeah, the shock of a politically incorrect, suicidal, drawling dead-ender has worn off in the dozen years since “Bad Santa” dropped its a dollop of strychnine into the holidays. When you’ve elected a “short fingered vulgarian” president, where’s the jolt in Jolly Olde Saint Nick swearing?

The best gag in the film might be the first one. As we left Willie in a hail of bullets at the end of “Bad Santa,” it’s a shock to see him groomed and confident behind the wheel of a Mustang convertible. Did he get to keep he cash at the end of that botched heist?

Then he’s distracted by a woman and a rear-end collision (ahem) brings him and us into reality. He’s just lost another Phoenix job, this one parking cars.

The overweight oaf of a kid (Brett Kelly) is now legally an adult, still slow, still thinking of Willie as his personal “Santa.” But the return of the treacherous dwarf-crook Marcus (Tony Cox) pulls Willie out of Arizona and into Chicago. Marcus talks him into another heist — this one at a holiday bell-ringing charity in the snowy/Windy City.

“Why are you even out of the joint anyway? You know, they used to sterilize guys like you, to keep the world from becoming some negro Land of Oz.”

But once the early insults are out of the way, the third partner makes herself known. That would be Sunny, Willie’s long-estranged ex-con mom, played with filth, verve and a covering of tattoos by Oscar winner Kathy Bates.

The mark is this charity run by a rich couple (Christina Hendricks of “Mad Men”), but to get access to that cash, first the trio has to dress up in red and white and ring a lot of bells. Their cash take on street corners isn’t all that, as they swap gruesome insults about every patron who passes — especially the ones with ugly babies.

“Guess that abortion didn’t take.”

Hendricks gets to play a moral crusader with an inner (sexual) freak, Marcus has to court a plus-sized guard (Jenny Zigrino) with an allegedly open mind, Willie has to work out some nasty mommy issues and the slow kid has to follow Willie from sunny Arizona to snowy Chicago without the good sense to wear long pants.

Director Mark Waters is a long way from “Mean Girls,” and the one thing he could have brought to this that surprised was talking his “Freaky Friday/Mean Girls” muse Lindsay Lohan into a cameo. Instead, Octavia Spencer, who has won an Oscar since playing a lowdown and dirty hooker in “Bad Santa” comes back, and brings her own enema. She remembers Willie’s sexual predilections.

Hendricks’ sex-in-the-alley cat doesn’t have the “Wait, is that a Gilmore Girl getting her Santa freak on?” zing of Lauren Graham’s turn in the first film. We’d expect no less from the busty “Mad Men” bad girl.

Thornton and Cox can still manage those long raunchy riffs that deliver laughs. But Thornton doesn’t let Willie’s desperation show this time. He’s too groomed, too fussy about his hair. Willie’s unlikely sex appeal is a little less absurd.

Bates brings extra or that fresh to the table, and the film sorely misses the late John Ritter and Bernie Mac, who played the foils to Willie and Marcus and their schemes. The “villains” here are too lame to name, and will not be putting this on their resume reel.

But the take-away impression from “BS 2” is that the vulgar world has passed it by, that it’s power to shock has dissipated by all that’s been said and done and elected in the intervening years. A drunken, swearing, whoring St. Nick? That’s all you’ve got?

MPAA Rating: R for crude sexual content and language throughout, and some graphic nudity

Cast:Billy Bob Thornton, Kathy Bates, Tony Cox, hristina Hendricks

Credits:Directed by Mark Waters, script by Johnny Rosenthal, Shauna Cross. A Broadgreen/Miramax release.

Running time:1:32

Fate has turned an indifferent eye to the breakout cast of the “Twilight” movies.

The stars of that film series — Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner — haven’t been able to turn that success and name recognition with that fanbase into ascending big screen careers.

Stewart finds work in films big and indie, but you have to think any short list she’s on for under 30 leading women has as much to do with her off-screen notoriety. The more-notorious-than-talented Pattinson works steadily, mostly in indie pictures, but has yet to deliver a post-vampire hit.

Lautner? He’s been in a few no-budget flops, and had recurring parts on TV series such as “Scream Queens.”

“Run the Tide” is a small-budget star vehicle tailored to Lautner’s screen persona. He plays an earnest young man who has sacrificed his future to look after the younger brother their junkie mother left behind when she went to prison.

Rey (Lautner) is over Lola (Constance Zimmer) and her self-absorbed, addicted ways.

“I have nothing to say to her.”

Young Oliver (Nico Christou) is adamant about not missing visiting hours at the prison.

“But she has something to say to you. It’s important!”

We’ve seen that Lola is slow to embrace her guilt and her addiction, resisting writing a therapeutic letter to those she’s wronged as part of her group therapy. Rey doesn’t need to see that to know she’s bad news.

With Lola due to get out, Rey fears a return to form. And as they’re already living in a rundown trailer in sand-and-sagebrush Texas, with his convenience store job their only means of support, he’s not into giving her a second chance.

“What about me? Huh? I never even had a FIRST chance!”

Melodramatic devices throw him into the arms of his high school girlfriend (Johanna Braddy), a blonde beauty living large in San Francisco. She’s a reminder of the promise he once had. Maybe she’s a lifeline to a better tomorrow.

That’s his logic, anyway. Rey grabs Oliver for a road trip, a vacation like the ones he’s dreamed of as he posts pictures and drags magic markers across the map on his wall, picking places he wants to see.

And as he and Oliver have never been to the ocean, California, here they come.

The pitfalls on the trip are dull and conventional. The brothers fight, separate, have car trouble and are pursued by their mom and her latest boyfriend.

And Lautner trots out another sensitive character that he can’t really do justice to. He’s a flat actor, never quite able to bring spark to his roles or make us forget how hard he has to try just to be this “convincing” in a part.

For a road picture, “Run the Tide” lacks suspense or wit. The script by Rajiv Shah never heats up beyond tepid, and director Soham Mehta fails to give it energy through the performances, the staging or the editing.

It’s more scenic than dramatic. Sadly, the same could be said about Lautner, who never seems to deliver even as his window for “stardom” closes.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for thematic content, language and a scene of sexuality.

Cast: Taylor Lautner, Constance Zimmer, Nico Christou, Johanna Braddy

Credits:Directed by Soham Mehta, script by Rajiv Shah. An eOne release.

Running time: 1:40

Just finished Margot Lee Shetterly’s “Hidden Figures,” soon to be a major motion picture, as publishers used to say. The trailers to the film had me figuring it was a Fla/NASA story about the women who did the math before computers were machines and not Civil Service job titles.

But of course it pre-dates that. Some of the women who did that work were African Americans, scoring plum government technical jobs way ahead of the integration curve. They were brought into the work force at the Langley research center in Hampton in the middle of segregated “Massive Resistance” Virginia during World War II, and proved themselves and rose through the ranks of aeronautical research as it morphed into rocketry and played an integral part in early manned flights.

They went to schools like Hampton Institute and other historically black colleges in Va., W. Va. , N.C. and elsewhere. They left teaching jobs in Farmville, Va., White Sulfur Springs W. Va. and environs, leaving families behind to help win the war. Black men were slower to make inroads, despite Roosevelt Admin efforts to level the playing field to help the war effort. But female “computers” came in, in segregated work quarters, and made their mark, gradually pushing open doors through the end of “separate but equal.”

With Oscar winner Octavia Spencer, Taraji B. Henson, Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst and Jim Parsons and an unproven “St. Vincent” producer directing, this could be a contender…or at least a feel good January release. A good book that could have been improved by the inclusion of a few photographs

The signs aren’t obvious, not with an estimated $73-75 million weekend (maybe slightly less) opening weekend for “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.” But maybe audiences were lining up, all those years, to see those adorable English moppets learning about magic, “the dark arts” and coping with villainy. And hormones.

Warner Brothers spent somewhere between $175-200 million on spinning off the Harry Potter at Hogwarts franchise.Hopes were pinned on a “Doctor Strange” sized opening weekend to re-launch the whole wizarding world thing. Reviews were solidly on the positive side, but not rapturous. So this is a bit of a letdown.

Not blowing up internationally, either.

Still, it was enough to drain the life out of “Doctor Strange,” to further disengage the sci-fi/fantasy audience that hasn’t embraced the cerebral “Arrival.”

“Trolls” looks to nudge past “Strange” into second place this weekend, another $17-18 million in the bank before Disney’s far superior “Moana” swallows it whole.

None of the other new openings made anything like that sort of money. “The Edge of Seventeen” will manage barely $6 million, if it has a better Saturday than it did Friday. An R-rated teen flick kind of rules out a lot of teens, insofar as cinemas enforce their own rating rules. If critics were the only judge, upstart studio STX would have a blockbuster on its hands.

And Miles Teller and Aaron Eckhart aren’t enough to sell the boxing picture “Bleed for This,” which won’t hit $3 million on its opening weekend. The only boxers we want to see are named Balboa. Apparently.

“Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” bombed, not cracking the top ten. The indie gay kid growing up on the streets of Miami’s Liberty City, “Moonlight,” did.

It’s been a desultory fall at the movies, no doubt about it.

“Doctor Strange” was a welcome critical darling and box office hit. But for the most part, we’ve been treated to “awards season” misfires and science fiction too smart for the country that just elected a proven charlatan president.

So. This weekend is a bit of a relief. Not that the latest J.K. Rowling escape into wizard world is all that. When I filed my review, it was sitting at 95% on the fanboy-biased Tomatomater of Rotten tomatoes. Now, it’s a much less over-rated 75% positive reviews there as saner heads have weighed in. Meh, I say to David Yates and his showcase “Rowling’s Not That Fanciful Beasties of 2016.”

Not much style, not a lot of wit, perfunctory performances. No heart. But for those who love to immerse themselves in Rowlingland, “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” is  2:16 more than you were ever going to get out of another Potter Picture. So give thanks.

“The Edge of Seventeen” is an R-rated riff on “Sixteen Candles.” Thirty years after that iconic teen film and kids have turned more coarse, but there’s a winning Hailee Steinfeld performance at its heart — great supporting players, especially the adults. And if John Hughes High sports nary a black or brown face in its halls, well that’s the way Hollywood sees America.

Great reviews for that one, though I found it had its share of flat spots and shortcomings.

Tom Ford’s “Nocturnal Animals” had some award season hype, and I could certainly see Michael Shannon pulling a supporting actor nomination for devouring this austere, airless and stylish thriller wrapped in a domestic melodrama. Reviews have been closer to average, overall.

“Bleed for This” has dazzling sound design, for a boxing picture. And Aaron Eckhart has the J.K. Simmons role as the trainer trying to get “The Paz-manian Devil” (Miles Teller) in shape for his title shot, and his comeback from a backbreaking car accident. True story, boxing picture, the supporting players are mostly shortchanged, but a pretty good movie — most critics agree. 

Other pictures opening this weekend which I got around to, a half-decent B-movie heist thriller with Idris Elba (who SINGS the title song) called “The Take” manages a few terrific scenes and “Magnus” is a middling doc about the still-reigning world chess champ (currently defending his title in NYC).

And “The 24 Hour War” is a racing doc co-directed by comic and car guy Adam Carolla about the Ford vs. Ferrari endurance race wars of the 1960s. Not bad, kind of a 70 minute Ford GT commercial, but not bad.

It’s an easy comparison, as “The Edge of Seventeen” was plainly inspired by the iconic ’80s teen comedy “Sixteen Candles.”

There’s a hapless, cute and ignored teenage girl, crushing on a guy who doesn’t know she exists. A scandalously-misplaced sexual communication puts her in an awkward spot. She’s anxious to grow up, to add romantic experiences to her life and her peers and the adults in her world aren’t any help.

Thirty-plus years since “Candles,” and the kids are more foul-mouthed,  more wired and have even easier access to alcohol and sex, although the movie high school is just as segregated.

But writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig improves on the old John Hughes formula in one important regard. She makes the adults just as funny, just as real and not the clueless bystanders of that “Breakfast Club” era.

“The Edge of Seventeen” may be a star vehicle for Hailee “True Grit” Steinfeld. But Woody Harrelson almost steals it from her, and Kyra Sedgwick adds a complicated, sympathetic ear to a self-absorbed kid screaming at the universe of of her life.

Steinfeld is the nerdily-named Nadine, square peg in the round holes of Lakewood High. She’s been that way since she started school. But for all those years, she’s had one true-blue friend, Krista (Haily Lu Richardson).

That relationship is shattered during an overnight booze bust at her house, when Krista hooks up with Nadine’s hunky, popular older brother Darien (Blake Jenner). Nadine’s world is ending, with nobody to talk her off the ledge and no friend to lead her out of the solitary depression she’s been in since her dad died.

All of this — or a lot of it — pours out in her confessional narration, and in venting tirades with Nadine’s long-suffering favorite teacher, Mr. Bruner — played with droll bemusement by Woody Harrelson. He’s the one she blurts her plans out to when she’s reached her limit.

“I don’t want to take up a ton of your time, but I’m going to kill myself! I just though an adult should know.”

Bruner’s eye-rolling dismissal tells us he’s heard this crap before and from this kid. But his sarcasm about the way she ruins his lunch period and his patience withstanding her insults about being tuned-out, phoning in his job, is hilarious. And he has a lot more scenes, every one of which add to the relationship and add laughs to the movie.

Nadine palpitates over smoldering Nick Mossman (Alexander Calvert), the school’s “bad boy.”

“God, juvie made him so HOT!”

She brushes off the stumbling, fumbling attentions of Erwin, the nerdie Korean kid in her history class, played with great, offhanded charm and depth by Hayden Szeto. In “Sixteen Candles,” the token Asian was a hilarious over-the-top stereotype, so — PROGRESS!

And at the root of all her confusion and misery is a growing self-knowledge.

“I had the worst thought. I’ve gotta spend the rest of my life with me.”

Craig scripts characters, jokes and relationships with a sharp eye and ear. The way Nadine and her brother fight is no-holds-barred real, drunken threats about calling the cops with stories of incestuous abuse. Her emotional brawls with her widowed, lonely and needy mom (Sedgwick) have the sting of truth built in.

And Craig gets the stakes of life at 17, when a rejected “friend request” is the end of the world.

The leads get several spotlight scenes, with Jenner most impressive at delivering another important improvement that “Seventeen” has over “Sixteen.” He’s the one to point out what a self-absorbed, babbling/venting drip Nadine is.

Steinfeld has her best role since “True Grit,” and manages the long, ranting monologues with ease. All that talking lets Harrelson, mostly silent in their encounters save for a cryptic counter put-down to Nadine’s cracks about his commitment and his salary, win their sparring matches with just a sigh.

The film’s shortcomings stem from the nature of Hollywood, the sorts of people who get there and get to make their movies out of their vision of the world. Most high schools aren’t suburban islands of mono-racial affluence, though most Hollywood filmmakers grew up in such enclaves. Filmmakers of limited world experience write student filmmaker characters because that’s what they know. Filmmakers show their own insecurities about age by creating teen characters who are, as Nadine insists, “into old movies, old music,” validating the screenwriter’s tastes as “still hip.”

But “The Edge of Seventeen” is still the best teen comedy since the heyday of Hughes, raunchier and randier as befits the passing decades, but with kids just as mixed-up as ever, and over exactly the same things. Teen angst never goes away, it just deserves a witty updating every now and then.

MPAA Rating:R for sexual content, language and some drinking – all involving teens

Cast: Hailee Steinfeld, Woody Harrelson, Haley Lu Richardson, Blake Jenner, Kyra Sedgwick

Credits:Written and directed by  Kelly Fremon Craig. An STX release.

Running time:1:44

Stick around through the credits of “The Take.” Yeah, that’s Idris Elba, the film’s star, crooning the title tune — “The Road Less Traveled.”

“We’re running the city down,” he growls. And before one runs his movie down, a pause, please, for just how retro and lyrical that phrase is.

It nicely complements a movie that can boast of a couple of cool scenes — a Parisian thriller about terrorism, riots and the Paris underworld of pickpockets, immigrants and rogue CIA agents.

The two lightest moments are about picking pockets. In the opener, the old mis-direction play — a hustler (Richard Madden) hires a beautiful woman to walk naked through a crowd of Paris tourists, who turn their attention and cell phones on her and not on the guy pulling their watches, wallets and passports.

Another winning moment, Michael, our American wallet-lifter shows just how much mayhem a pickpocket can create in a bar, when he needs to.

And then there’s a brutal brawl that the guy the French call “The American” (Elba) punches his way out of a French paddy wagon, and a riot cleverly and bravely manipulated into a rescue mission.

Those are the only clever turns in this otherwise generic action script by Andrew Baldwin and director and co-writer James Watkins.

Elba has the Jason Statham role of “reckless, insubordinate” CIA Agent Briar, hot on the heels of a guy his agency and the French have identified as a terrorist. Michael (Madden) stole a bag that had a bomb in it. Now, he’s being hunted by the real bombers, the French cops and the CIA.

He runs the minute he spies Briar. Who wouldn’t?

“YOU were coming after me,” he explains upon being caught. “Have you SEEN yourself?”

Yeah, Elba is a pretty imposing dude, especially when he’s not singing.

Briar has to punch, shoot and head-butt his way through half of Paris in pursuit of the “real” terrorists, who say they’re planning something big for Bastille Day.

Kelly Reilly (“Flight”) is Briar’s immediate superior, the one who turns him loose. Jose Garcia is the French Intelligence chief who seems a step too slow to get to the bottom of all this. Charlotte Le Bon (“The 100 Foot Journey”) is the radical French lass mixed up with bomb throwers.

And Madden (he was Prince Charming in the recent “Cinderella,” and stars in “Medici: Masters of Florence” on TV) is the sidekick “with potential,” the guy who gets the “This is CRAZY. I don’t work for the CIA” line.

“You do today.”

Elba’s action credentials are well-established, so there’s little for him to prove here. The fights are convincing enough, even if the plot is all coincidence, conspiracy and con jobs.

Connoisseurs of B-pictures will note the similarity to any of a dozen Jason Statham action movies, where more effort is put into fights than into character, dialogue or plot.

Still, there is that bonus, rolling under the closing credits, Elba doing his best Barry White/The Temptations.

But it’s not the city that’s being run down here, it’s the clock on his window for action stardom. He’s not the new Bond, but surely there’s better material out there than this, even with the working vacation Paris offers, and the promise that “Hey, you can SING over the closing credits.”

MPAA Rating:R for violence, language and some nudity

Cast: Idris Elba, Richard Madden, Kelly Reilly, Charlotte LeBon, Jose Garcia

Credits:Directed by James Watkins, script by Andrew Baldwin and James Watkins. A Hightop release.

Running time: 1:32

(Yes, Idris Elba can sing. MORE proof.)

Disney’s latest animated musical “Moana” is so good it could prompt a new catchphrase in the Burbank HQ of The Mouse.

“Pixar who?”

A moving, hilarious and stunningly-animated adventure epic, it’s about remembering who you are, living up to your potential, daring to reach for the horizons and not being content with the status quo.

It is an instant classic, a near masterpiece and the best Disney animated film since its last Golden Age, which produced “The Little Mermaid” and “The Lion King.” It’s almost as ambitious and more visually striking than Pixar’s recent best — “Inside Out.”

“Moana” is about a child raised in the Polynesian myths of her native Hawaii. The title character is the daughter of the chief (voiced by Maori actor Temuera Morrison). In song, he and his people counsel the child to “find happiness right where you are…The Island gives us what we need.”

In other words, “Don’t go beyond the reef” that surrounds their island.

But as she grows into a teen, Moana (Auli’i Cravalho) sees the coconut blight and declining fish stocks around their island. Her grandmother (Rachel Rose) reminds her of the legend of Maui, the demi-god who stole a magic stone that foretold the doom to come. Grandma shows the girl their hidden past as great voyagers, “way finders,” sailing their huge outrigger canoes across the Pacific. Moana resolves to right Maui’s wrong, to sail beyond the reef that her father so fears and return that “heart” stone to the island goddess to whom it belongs.

There are hints of “Finding Nemo” in the plot — an overprotective and fearful father, worrying of the dangers his child might face “beyond the reef.” As a depiction of foreign culture and legend, this is “Pocahontas,” without being patronizing, “Mulan” with funnier combat.

Moana, who doesn’t know how to sail and needs the help of the sea — a plastic, sentient spirit here, literally “the Living Sea.” Maui is in exile, a shape-shifter who has lost his magic fish hook. Moana will fetch him and the hook and make him return the green “heart” stone to its owner.

Only Maui is played — that’s the only word for it — by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. The “demi-god of the wind and sea” arches his eyebrow, wisecracks and wiggles his muscles in near-perfect imitation of the Polynesian footballer/wrestler/actor. Johnson’s deadpan way with a line rivals Disney’s go-to funnyman Patrick Warburton in timing and simple vocal dexterity.

He teases and taunts the “princess,” who doesn’t want to be called that, especially in a Disney movie.

“If you’re in a skirt and have an animal sidekick (a loony chicken), you’re a princess.”

Maui, a Promethean trickster/helper-of-humans, is covered in tattoos, which are animated and serve as Maui’s personal history and his conscience. The ink is literally at war with his priorities, making for one of the best animated sight gags ever.

Moana and Maui will battle wee pirates and vast lava monsters on their quest, stop for song with a hoarding crab monster (Jemaine Clement) who croons of his love for shiny things, menacingly rhyming shiny with “Now it’s time to kick your hiney.”

Will Moana, a wonderfully girl-empowering character with wit, pluck and heart, learn to sail, to be a “way finder,” to be the person her people “need you to be?” Can you say “Disney ending?”

The songs, a mix of Polynesian choral pieces and “show tunes” by “Hamilton” Tony winner Lin-Manuel Miranda, are witty in that “Under the Sea” vein without being sing-along catchy. The longing song, “How Far I’ll Go” doesn’t add up to another “Let It Go.” But Johnson singing his “I’m Maui” introductory number, “You’re Welcome,” is a stitch. And Flight of the Conchords vet Clement’s “Shiny” feels like a sure Oscar nominee, this film’s “Be Our Guest.”

It’s a bit long, and a middling Disney short titled “Inner Workings” is unnecessarily attached to it adding to that length. But “Moana,” along with this spring’s “Zootopia,” shows that Disney Animation has finally reached parity with its corporate sibling, Pixar.  And with middling sequels like this summer’s “Finding Dory” and the upcoming “Cars 3” in the Pixar pipeline, maybe “parity” is selling Walt Disney Animation short.

MPAA Rating:PG for peril, some scary images and brief thematic elements

Cast: The voices of Auli’i Cravalho, Dwayne Johnson, Jemaine Clement, Temuera Morrison

Credits:Directed by John Musker, Ron Clements, Don Hall, Chris Williams, script by Jared Bush. A Walt Disney release.

Running time: 1:50

Bad movies aren’t bad by intent.

The team making “Shut In” had the Oscar-nominated star of “The Ring,” Naomi Watts, a big, creepy violent kids, a remote, old and creaky house isolated by a winter storm and menace from spooky things she cannot rationally believe.

And it doesn’t work. Not for more than a few minutes, anyway. But they had the bare bones to build a passable if routine thriller here, if they’d known what they were doing.

Watts plays Mary, a child psychologist in suburban Maine. Pay no attention to the assistant and patients with French accents. It was cheaper to film in Quebec and that’s that.

She’s just lost her husband in a car wreck on his way to take his son (Charlie Heaton) to an institution. Stephen is a violent kid with impulse control issues.

Or he was. The accident left him paralyzed and catatonic, and Mary is his sole caregiver. She’s overwhelmed and depressed by that and ready to place him somewhere else. Her own shrink, Dr. Wilson (Oliver Platt) agrees, via Facetime, that this might be the right thing to do.

“You can’t save every child in Maine,” her assistant burbles in her Not-a-Mainer accent.

Tom, a deaf nine-year old patient (Jacob Tremblay) has some of Stephen’s tendencies. He too can be violent. Mary thinks he’s save-able, but his mom is moving him elsewhere.

Then, as a winter storm approaches, Tom escapes from his parents and breaks into Mary’s SUV. Her efforts to resolve this send the kid fleeing into the wintry night. And that’s when the weird noises in the house and her nightmares begin.

Mary’s frantic online sessions with her shrink earn scientific explanations and dismissals.

“Please please you have to believe me!”

But someone, or something, is in the house with her and means to do her harm. Tom’s ghost? Stephen’s malicious spirit?

The film’s best fright comes via Skype — something Dr. Wilson glimpses. Most every other scare is manufactured and fake.

It’s the sort of movie where you understand every character, his or her function and their fate the first time you meet them. Even if it was perfectly executed, this was never going to surprise. The fact that it’s a bit of a hash means we never, for one second, buy into anything supernatural, means we are several steps ahead of our heroine from start to finish.

And that’s why “Shut In” fails.

Naomi Watts deserves better than this. So does Oliver Platt. So do we.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for terror and some violence/bloody images, nudity, thematic elements and brief strong language

Cast: Naomi Watts, Charlie Heaton, Oliver Platt, Jacob Tremblay

Credits:Directed by Farren Blackburn , script by Christina Hodson. A EuropaCorp release.

Running time: 1:31

The wonders never cease in J.K. Rowling’s “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.”

Or maybe it just feels that way.

Two hours and thirteen minutes of Rowling’s endless introductions of new critters, new magic tricks and new wizarding world nomenclature — buttressed by the best effects money can buy — and they can’t figure out how to gracefully end it.

More is not always better, something even the Great J.K. seems to have never figured out. She took over screenwriting duties here, and it turns out her favorite amongst all the wizard movies were the excruciating first couple, those directed by Christopher Columbus, who was too timid to “leave anything out.”

Brtitish TV veteran David Yates is the Designated Harry Potter Picture Director now, appreciated for his efficiency and the fact that nobody else is beating down his door seeking his services or “style.” No, gloom by itself is not a style. Ask Tim Burton.

It’s a more adult (ish) film, owing to the general lack of children, the intensity of the violence and the sex appeal of the casting. Perhaps some adults can lose themselves in this world, reveling in the magic, plumbing for Rowling’s themes and deeper meaning. Not me.

“Beasts” is based on Rowling’s “textbook” to the world she created and populated, allegedly a work Harry Potter and his classmates would have to memorize if they were to master and understand Nifflers, Mooncalves and too many others to list — or bother trying to spell — here.

The author/researcher/ magizoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) has come to New York in the Roaring 20s with a briefcase full of beasts and a secret mission.

But America is a paranoid place, thanks to the “New Salemers,” an anti-witch league run by orphan-abuser Mary Lou (Samantha Morton). Which is why it’s such a disaster when Newt’s creatures — a few of them — escape. An investigator wizard from the American version of the various Ministries we saw in the Hogwarts films spies Newt’s violations of “The Statute of Secrecy” and brings him in to a vast baroque bureaucracy where a huge, ornate meter tracks the “threat level” to wizards from the “Nomag’s,” as the Americans so clumsily name the Muggles.

Paranoid.

But Porpentina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston of “Steve Jobs”) has been demoted and can’t get the attention of her stylish, vulpine boss (Colin Farrell). So she resolves to help Newt, figure out what to do with a “Nomag” (Really, J.K.?) baker named Kowalski (Dan Fogler) who has stumbled upon their universe and round up the missing beasts.

It’s a slack film, filled with long scenes of gawking at this four-winged eagle or that platypus/puppy with magpie (thieving) tendencies. The worst Potter movies do this, ad nauseum.

Characters who can dash hither and yon with the whisk of a wand are always walking walking walking through the recreated (digital and otherwise) New York sets. We’re treated to epic scenes of monstrous mayhem, and not just by the Fantastic Beasts. There’s something/someone else loose in the city, perhaps tied to the missing villain Grindelwald, who dominated the pages of various wizard newspapers in the opening credits.

Alison Sudol charmingly vamps it up as Porpentina’s sister, Queenie, a genuine flapper, a mind-reader and a bit of a bombshell. So yeah, she knows what you’re thinking, guys. Jon Voight is a nomag newspaper publisher hell-bent on getting his senator son into the White House.

And Ron Perlman growly- voices a shady elvish character in a bar.

But this is Redmayne’s picture, and he takes pains to ensure every shot has his hair flopped forward, his head cocked quizzically to one side and his eyes opened to maximum twinkle. It’s like an audition to be the new Doctor Who, only there’s no hint of danger to him.

There are laughs, and the insertion of a person alien to this world (Kowalski) makes for lots of opportunities that funnyman Fogler (“Balls of Fury”) makes the most of. But even those moments are drawn out past their punchline. The chases are routine, the supporting characters mostly colorless and the color palette all grey and wintry.

Which leaves us with Rowling’s subtexts — about inclusion, tolerance, protecting your world from intolerance, inclusion, understanding and preserving endangered species. Edgy content in our deplorable Brexit age.

There are no doubt millions upon millions — most of them children — desperate to re-immerse themselves in Rowling’s creation, and for those first few minutes of “Fantastic Beasts,” when Newt makes his way onto Ellis Island and John Williams’ famous theme wafts through the soundtrack, I was with them.

And that first peek inside Newt’s suitcase is a bit of a dazzler.

But as “Beasts” hit the 90 minute mark, then the 120 minute one, I was done and there’s a good chance you will be, too. “Fantastic” or not, there are only so many beasts worth finding, and they hardly add up to a movie on their own.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for some fantasy action violence

Cast: Eddie Redmayne, Colin Farrell, Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol, Samantha Morton, Jon Voight

Credits:Directed by David Yates, script by J.K. Rowling. A Warner Brothers release.

Running time: 2:13