This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 at 3:21 pm and is filed under Comedy, Family, Fantasy Adventure, M, Movie Reviews, NEW ON VIDEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Director: Zach Helm
Starring: Natalie Portman, Dustin Hoffman, Jason Bateman, Zach Mills
First time director Zach Helm, starts out with his own script and a small, but talented, cast in his attempt to make a light and amusing, offbeat family fantasy film about a magical toy store. Hoffman shines, with the help of his cast mates, but the store, and the story, doesn’t quite manage to impart the sense of wonder that it was going for. More excitement was needed for this imaginative tale to really sparkle.
Molly Mahoney (Natalie Portman) is the manager of an amazing toy store, through which magic flows like a breeze, apparently because of its vibrant and 243 year old owner, Edward Magorium, (Dustin Hoffman)but change is in the air. Molly feels that she should find a more serious job, and Mr. Magorium is interested in preparing his store to be passed on. For this reason, he hires a dry accountant named Henry (Jason Bateman) to put the business in proper administrative order. Watching all this is Eric, a hat-collecting nine-year-old, who seems to be part of the store in some unclear fashion. Meanwhile, the living, breathing store doesn’t seem too pleased about all this upheaval and begins to act up.
Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium plays like a second rate version of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, which was, itself a second rate version of the 1971 original. This film, however, never manages to step out from the recent crowd of family-orientated fantasy films to establish itself as a memorable, potential classic, but instead presents us with a mildly entertaining 93 minute distraction.
