Harry Potter and the overacting that takes over some characters

In Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, most of the performances are very subtle. But the ones that are not truly stick out like a sore thumb. So we’re looking the series as a whole and strange performances.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them features an over the top performance from Johnny Depp as Gellert Grindelwald. It sticks out, and not in a good way, because everyone else is playing their parts in a very human way. And while Grindelwald is a mad man, he’s still a human being.

So it begs the question: who has the most over the top performance in the Harry Potter series? Because we’ve only seen about five minutes of his portrayal, we’re going to leave out Depp. Truth be told, I think the most over the top that somehow works is Slughorn.

Yes, his scenes are awkward and he’s in, arguably, the worst of the Harry Potter movies but still. When he is at the Battle of Hogwarts, he truly shines. So yes, he doesn’t fit in at times but it is still a pretty sound performance in the long run.

One that might be outrageous but is also heartbreaking is Emma Thompson’s Professor Trelawney. The costume is insane, she’s constantly upset and frazzled and yet she is one of the greatest characters in the series (especially in the films). So maybe sometimes the craziness works with Harry Potter. But seemingly only to redeem these characters to us.

Like, for instance, Gilderoy Lockhart. The insanely vain man seems like a cartoon yet we all fell in love with him (probably because of Kenneth Branagh). So, again, over the top works. But only to make us like the character.

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Let’s hope Depp tones it down because if there’s one thing that shouldn’t happen, it’s that we shouldn’t care about Grindelwald.