Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium review

The real wonder of this film has less to do with Mr Magorium's Emporium and more to do with how it is possible to make such a tedious film about a magic toyshop. The only real magic in evidence is the disappearance of a decent script. Although screenwriters in Hollywood have only recently gone on strike, Mr Magorium's writer and director Zach Helm appears to have preempted the strike by walking out before he'd finished working on this script.

The story moves along at a laborious pace, meandering off down blind alleys as it tries to fill in around the all too flimsy plot. It's never clear where it's going or quite what it's doing there. The central characters are all rather forlorn and, even in the hands of an accomplished cast, exhibit less life than the stuffed animals in the store. At times the disjointed scenes verge on falling apart and you half expect a cry of "Cut!" to ring out from a director who realizes things aren't quite working.

Dustin Hoffman's Mr Magorium, the eccentric 243 year-old inventor, resembles a flamboyant 'Ratso' Rizzo with a Quentin Crisp bouffant. Wacky he may look, but the promise of an exuberant, anarchic character is never realized. The only colorful thing about him is his wardrobe. Having once helped Thomas Edison invent the light bulb, Magorium has run his emporium for the past 113 years selling such oddities as a hanging mobile with live fish. Sadly though, given the limitless possibilities of CGI, the stores inventory is rarely wondrous.

Natalie Portman plays the emporium's enthusiastic manager Molly Mahoney, who still harbors dreams of being a pianist. It's the reason she's reluctant to takeover the store when her boss declares that he's "departing" this world. His long life finally ending because his shoes have worn out; the significance of which is another of the film's meaningless elements. Trying, but failing, to add anything to the story is the young Eric (Zach Mills) a quirky kid with no friends but plenty of hats who spends all his spare time at the store, and Weston (Jason Bateman), a starchy accountant brought in to sort out the store's finances.

It's hard to really know what Helm was aiming for. Lacking the exuberance, wit and whimsy you'd hope for in a kid's film, and with Magorium's impending departure dominating, a rather dark cloud hovers over events. Frankly, you'd have more fun at Toy 'R' Us.

Kevin Murphy