MAGICAL FILM PROJECTIONS

Shining light through acetate windows brings six Wizarding World creatures, from Dobby the house-elf to Swooping Evil, to any darkened wall.

That’s the idea anyway—but as quickly comes apparent, neither the design nor the production of this blatant grab at spinoff dollars ensures that it will work. “Shine a light through the window on each page,” suggest the vague instructions on a removable sleeve, “to project incredible scenes on the wall or ceiling.” Similar directions on an inside leaf more accurately promise only “shadows.” The forms that are printed on each clear plastic panel are hair-thin outlines with occasional black fill. Since they seem to require particularly exact movement of either page or hand-held light source in order to bring them into focus, the best that most viewers can hope for (in the absence of a classroom transparency projector) is a hazy monochrome smear. In thoroughly optimistic bids to catch fan attention for more than a nanosecond, each sheet comes with a snatch of relevant dialogue from one of the films (“Hagrid: Isn’t he beautiful? Say hello to Buckbeak!”) headed by a scene-setting rubric, both of which are hard to read under optimal, unlit operating conditions. A final unmarked window offers viewers a chance to make their own failed projections. Neither the dry-erase markers required for this last nor a light source are provided.

Not even a “Lumos” spell can rescue this flop.