If You’re Worried About The New Harry Potter, Tubi Has Something Much Worse

By Robert Scucci
| Published 15 seconds ago

With all the Harry Potter buzz lately, everybody’s writing about the franchise, its future, J.K. Rowling, and so on. I don’t really have anything new to add to the conversation, so this is my warped way of inserting myself into it. I’ve read the books and seen the films. They didn’t define my childhood, but I remember enjoying them. They’re fine, but they were one-and-done for me. I’ve never been big on young adult fantasy, but sometimes it’s nice to feel like you’re part of the zeitgeist, so you play along to understand the references.

This line of thinking led me to Tubi (home of Amityville Death Toilet), where you can stream The Mystical Adventures of Billy Owens. This movie falls into the “mockbuster” category, meaning it was produced to capitalize on the success of the wildly popular Harry Potter franchise, and for no other reason.

This movie, in so many words, is a blatant Harry Potter knockoff that hasn’t publicly disclosed its finances, but I’ll describe as hilariously low budget. It’s filmed in Canadian strip malls, you can spot crew members reflected in mirrors, and the CGI looks like something anybody could throw together after a day or two button-mashing in Blender. Oh yeah, and Roddy Piper is basically a Hagrid/Dumbledore stand-in, so on all fronts this cinematic experiment is something you need to know about.

Codex! Scriptoria! Please! 

The entirety of The Mystical Adventures of Billy Owens is narrated by Mandy Finch (Ciara O’Hanlon), the bookworm of the group, basically functioning as Hermione in this universe (yes, there’s a sequel, Billy Owens and the Secret of the Runes). Mandy recalls the events we’re about to witness, which immediately tells me they all lived to see another day, otherwise somebody else would be narrating.

We’re introduced to our hero, Willard “Billy” Owens (Dalton Mugridge), who, on his eleventh birthday, realizes he’s a wizard after buying a magic wand from Roddy Piper’s William Thurgood for $11.

Billy Owens learns that the magic word is “please.” Roddy Piper uses what looks like Microsoft PowerPoint technology to spell words like “Codex” and “Scriptoria” in his antique shop. There’s another kid named Devon (Christopher Fazio), who’s clearly meant to be a Ron Weasley surrogate, but his presence is so inconsequential that I’m only mentioning it to prove I actually sat through this entire movie to impress you. And I did without bumping it up to 1.5x speed for reasons I’ll never fully understand.

The kids learn that Sumerian prankster god Loki is going to seize their small town of Spirit River if they don’t intervene, so naturally, they go to the library, where they try to hide from a security guard by talking loudly and waving their flashlights around. There’s a CGI fire at William’s shop, and then there’s a dragon.

At one point, because there’s clearly no budget, Billy tries to get out of doing chores by waving the wand at his parents. You think something cool is about to happen, but instead his father just looks the other way and Billy hides under a coat. Everybody saves the day, and we get one of those “To Be Continued” cards, threatening us with a sequel.

You Have To Be A Special Kind Of Person To Subject Yourself To This

The Mystical Adventures of Billy Owens is hardly a movie. Though its runtime is 84 minutes, the last 10 are bloopers and credits. The amount of nothing that happens here is insane, and the little effort that went into it is still disproportionate to the story it’s trying to tell. If you’re wondering who movies like this are made for, the answer is me. It’s so stupid that I can’t help myself.

Actually, now that I think about it, this movie does serve a purpose. If you’re one of the millions of people upset about the new Harry Potter trailer, just fire up The Mystical Adventures of Billy Owens on Tubi to remind yourself that it could be so much worse.