Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium DVD Review
Posted by Scotty Flamingo on 02.28.2008
The most fantastical whimsilicious movie ever! REALLY!
You might remember Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium. It came out in theaters a mere four months ago. Or maybe like everyone else, you don’t remember the five minutes it was out. I saw the previews and thought it was possible that it was an overlooked children’s movie. Something akin to The Iron Giant, a modern classic mismarketed by the studio. I called up one of my friends and he said “I kinda was interested in seeing that.”
Now I’m often accused for being overly negative. It could be because my old column, The Bullseye, focused on trashing a different film, actor, or TV show each week. People are so judgmental. Anyway, the friend I chose is the antithesis of me. He loves everything, he’s freakin’ Mikey. Whenever we go to the movies, after nearly every trailer, he says “It could be good.” Two of his all time favorite movies are The Fifth Element and A Life Less Ordinary. I did a Bullseye on Fifth Element, and was so traumatized by Life Less Ordinary that I blocked out too much of it to do a column on. So I roped him into a viewing of Mr. Magorium to help balance me out. So is Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium a hidden gem or does it deserve to be boxed up and put in the attic?
The Story
Mr. Magorium (Hoffman) is a crazy old owner of a toy store in the middle of the city. He decides one day that he is “leaving” and wants his assistant Molly Mahoney (Portman) to take over operations of the store. In preparation of the transfer of ownership, he hires uberaccountant , Henry Weston (Bateman). Of course, the store is no mere toy story, it is a magical place with an assortment of oddities and sentient toys. Molly struggles with taking over the store along with the departure of Mr. Magorium while the Emporium itself has its own opinion on the situation.
Meanwhile, store patron, Eric is a 9 year old boy who has no friends and collects hats. He really has nothing to do with anything other than he likes the store and tries to befriend Henry.
And in yet another storyline Henry learns to believe in a little thing called magic. Yeah right. Like he wouldn’t just be hitting on Natalie Portman all day. “So…you uh, dig toys?”
The Rest
Comparisons will inevitably be made to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory or the recent remake and even compared to the latter, the film falls short of the mark.
The problem with Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium is that it tries too hard to be whimsical. It is like writer, Zach Helm, had a bunch of ideas and just dumped them all into the movie thinking that they could substitute for things like plot, structure, and pacing. Things happen just to show how whimsical Mr. Magorium is with no real point.
A major problem is that there is no reason to believe that the Emporium is anything special. Unlike Wily Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, we are introduced to the Emporium immediately. With Wonka, you spent half to film getting to the Factory so that by the time the gates opened, you were dying to get in. With no suspense or build up, there isn’t much wonder to be had at Magorium’s assortment of living toys. The characters themselves don’t even treat the store like a big deal. Kids run around like any typical toy store. There is no wonder from them.
You would think that Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium could at least be saved by its strong pedigree of acting talent. Even in this area the film falls flat. Dustin Hoffman brings nothing particularly special to his portrayal of Mr. Magorium. He reminds you more of one of Jim Carrey’s skits from In Living Color than an actual fleshed out character. Like most of the things in this movie, the character is inconsistent. One moment he is innocent, childlike and naïve; the next he is a wizened old owl full of valuable life lessons.
Natalie Portman is endearing at times during the film, but other times she is wooden and seems bored. You would think that she would have learned her lesson with special effect heavy fantasies after the Star Wars prequels, but apparently not. A lot of the fault with her Molly Mahoney lies with the writing though. Her character spends the film lecturing Henry about not believing in magic, and yet her major problem is that she doesn’t believe in her own abilities to produce magic. This would be fine if there was some sort of build up to this, but Molly has no problem doing magical things such as pulling toys out of a giant catalog earlier in the film, so it is hard to believe that she would have a problem handling things on her own.
I am a huge fan of Jason Bateman. I think he has been an enormous talent since his days on Silver Spoons and is just now getting the acclaim that he deserves. He can work in a variety of styles of storytelling from dumb comedies like Dodgeball (where he played the clueless extreme sports announcer, Pepper Brooks) to more subtle comedies like Juno or Arrested Development. Unfortunately, Bateman can’t overcome what he is given as far as character goes, which isn’t much. He isn’t bad or anything, he is just there. He plays the stereotypical role of buttoned down cynic who works too much. We’ve seen this before. What makes it worse is that it isn’t particularly believable. It is hard to believe that Weston wouldn’t believe in the stores magic when he works there every day and can plainly see perpetual flying paper airplanes and Kermit the Frog shopping there. When he is finally convinced of the stores abilities, you are thinking “How is that any different from everything else that’s been going on?”
The film also suffers from what I refer to as Too Many Characters Syndrome. Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium has not one, but 4 major character arcs going on at the same time. Even though the main storyline is Molly’s inheritance of the store, equal time is spent on 9-year old Eric (played by Zach Mills). He serves as the stories narrator as well. Dividing up the movie between two major characters as well as trying to give us arcs with Henry and Mr. Magorium makes the film an unfocused mess. Nothing clicks because just as one character starts to develop, the story movies on to another one.
The Extras
Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium has one of the poorest extras for any non bare bones DVD I’ve seen. There is no commentary track, which always hurts. The extras are a collection of featurrettes that focus on different aspects of the film. The subjects of the featurrettes are a seemingly random array of topics. If you put them all together, you get something like the 30 minute documentaries that HBO uses to promote their films.
Supposedly The Mind of Zach Helm – Focuses on the writer/director. He is heralded as a creative genius, but mainly I just noticed that he had a dumb haircut.
The Sock Monkey – This focuses on on of the stores toys that appears for about 1 minute of the entire movie. I don’t know which is worse, the fact that a feature is devoted to something that is such a small part of the film or seeing the amount of time and money that was spent on something that was such a small part of the film.
Mortimer the Zebra – Mr. Magorium has a pet Zebra in his bedroom. He appears in two scenes for maybe 15 seconds each time. Apparently that warrants a feature.
Lincoln Man – This one spotlights a man made of Lincoln Logs that Eric builds.
An Eccentric Boss and an Awkward Apprentice – Now at least we are getting to major characters. This one focuses on Mr. Magorium and Molly.
To Meet Eric Applebaum, Just Say Hi – This one focuses on the kid.
The Magical Toy Store – The Store
Fun on the Set – The usual goofing off and how everyone loves working together.
So there you go, a pretty poor selection. Even if you actually liked this movie, you wouldn’t be satisfied by what you get here.
The Verdict
By now, you’ve got a feel of my opinion. So what did my friend, “Mikey” think? He hated it too. I heard him audibly sigh three times during the movie, a sure sign of malcontent.
The 411: Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium has no wonder to it at all. The best I can suggest is that it might be useful for entertaining babies with the color and lights. With bland, poorly fleshed out characters, and multiple storylines that aren't given time to develop, it is a chore to watch instead of the cinematic confection that it seems so desperately to want to be.
