Movie Review: Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

This young-audience-friendly lark won't win any prizes, but may steal a few hearts as a kooky kidflick aimed at the kid in each of us.

GP Says: Grandparents, listen up: This G-rated children's movie doesn't work at all, not by (y)our standards. But, grandchildren, listen up: You're going to have a good time anyway.

FAO Schwartz and Toys "R" Us are toy stores. Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, on the other hand, is a TOY STORE.

Everything comes to life in this magical place, including the store itself.

Would that the movie did.

Not that your young grandchildren are going to notice or mind.

Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium is an underachieving but never-overbearing coming-of-age children's fantasy.

Dustin Hoffman plays the title character, the mega-eccentric, 243-year-old, Willy Wonka-whimsical proprietor of this bizarre retail outlet, with a lonely 9-year-old assistant (Zach Mills) who's great with toys, but friendless.

Mr. M is about to retire, and perhaps die, so he's in the process of choosing his successor.

Looks like it will be his earnest but free-spirited assistant, Molly Mahoney, played by Natalie Portman, who works as the store manager. She's also a composer, one with a song that keeps running through her head, but who lacks the self-esteem to go out and fulfill her destiny.

The aged wackadoodle also hires a buttoned-down accountant, Henry Weston, played by Jason Bateman, to put the books in order for the first time ever and figure out just what the store is worth.

But, once the supernatural proprietor decides to bequeath the magical store to Molly, the place changes drastically. The toys stop doing what they usually do and, like a truculent child whose playthings have just been taken away unfairly, the whole place has what amounts to a temper tantrum.

MMWE is the directing debut of writer-director Zach Helm (who wrote the script for director Marc Forster's Stranger Than Fiction), who toys around with the notion that, as one chapter title puts it, you gotta believe it to see it.

His movie has color, and little else.

The lesson here is that writing and directing are very different skills. Helm gets screenwriting points for attempting to deal sensitively with the concept of death, but he loses directing points for choppy continuity, awkward cutting, flatfooted camera placement, and an unnecessary case of the cutesies.

In the land of the G-rated movie (and a tiny land it is), perhaps the one-note movie can still be king.

But in the case of this wannabe fairy tale, it's unlikely to be a very long reign.

Dustin Hoffman, channeling Ed Wynn, seems to be having a ham of a good time goofing around gleefully for a young audience.

Natalie Portman, as assured a young actress as we have, lends the film a firm, grounded emotional component.

Jason Bateman, possessed of impeccable comic timing, although stuck with a one-note role that doesn't give him much with which to work, nevertheless makes an appropriately low-key contribution.

And, young and assured Zach Mills would appear to be a find.

But what MMWE mostly has going for it, regardless of its considerable aesthetic shortcomings, is that it is aggressively and unapologetically a children's movie.

That is, it stocks its shelves with what very young moviegoers respond to: toys, gadgets, playtime, slapstick, smart-alecky behavior, broad jokes, bright colors, and seemingly disorganized chaos.

This young-audience-friendly lark won't win any prizes, but it might steal a few hearts as a kooky kidflick that aims for the kid in each of us and, well, only hits the target in the youngest viewers.

Not, as they say, that there's anything wrong with that.

Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium declares no moratorium on fun, but has as much blunder as wonder.