| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| BaftaBaby |
Posted - 12/02/2007 : 16:27:23
Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium
When the delightful, perpetually cheerful and curious 243 year-old owner of a magical toyshop - where all the toys are alive and which is snuggled in the shadow of formidable urban office blocks - tells you it's time for him "to leave" and the store gets all sad at the news, well, I think we all know we're no where near Kansas.
The eponymous Mr. M is embodied by Dustin Hoffman, who despite an occasional meandering accent proves he's more than capable of filling every pause with as much poignancy and charm as he does delivering the sometimes overly sloppy and pointed life-lessons that take up house room in the script.
Assisting Mr M is the gamin-like Natalie Portman, certainly the inheritor of Audrey Hepburn's doe-eyed sparkle. As Mahoney, classical composer manque, she's all but given up on her early musical promise, still plodding away at a masterwork that keeps eluding her, even as she shares the magic behind the Emporium's portals. This isn't a place where dreams come true, but one that inspires them in the first place.
It's not so much a shop, though we're meant to assume some filthy lucre changes hands from time to time. It's more a combination refuge and playground for children in their unquenchable passion to play. And for one kid in particular: only child Eric is friendless, intelligent, and just quirky enough to ensure the other kids find him strange. He collects hats - hundreds of hats. He's played to perfection by Zach Mills without a hint of goo.
The character most unlikely for him to befriend is called Mutant - a reinterpretation by Mr M of the strait-laced, imagination-free zone that is Henry the accountant [a solid if slightly too restrained performance by Arrested Development's Jason Bateman].
Which brings us back to that astounding announcement that Mr M knows his time is up. He's never had the store valued, hence his hiring of the accountant, partly to quantify what he intends to leave to Molly Mahoney.
But she doesn't want to inherit the store ... she wants ... she wants to fulfill that early promise, to unstick herself because she's convinced it's Mr M who has all the magic. Certainly not her.
And Mutant's convinced it's certainly not in him that any magic resides.
So everyone tries to make Mr M change his mind about going. After all, his reasons for departure sound so flimsy - long ago he bought lotsa shoes, convinced they'd last all his life. And the ones he's got on now, well, gulp, those - yes, the ones with holes in both soles, well they're the last pair. So he's gotta go. I guess they never heard of shoemakers in Magic-land.
Anyway, it's when all these disparate strands start intertwining that goo appears in abundance. Which probably blinds us to the fact that the story is pretty thin and full of stated and unstated cliched life-lessons.
So if a heavily confected and thinly disguised parable is your thing, here's an 1� hours you'll appreciate. And even if it's not, if there's a pre-teen sharing house-room with our adult heart, you'll get magicked up in many of the moments.
But the store - with a celebrity guest appearance by Kermit the Frog - tugs more heartstrings than any of the actual characters. And that's where the film's true weakness lies. Writer/Director Zach Helm, responsible for the screenplay of Stranger Than Fiction, clearly has an interesting imagination and understands the purpose of fantasy in a literary context. What I'm not convinced about given this latest from his imagination factory, is whether he's got anything to say that's worth the intriguing setting.
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