The new children's fantasy film Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium doesn't live up to its promising title.
Not by a long shot.
The star of the film is Dustin Hoffman as the slightly mysterious, odd-looking-and-sounding titular character -- a 243-year-old proprietor of a magical toy store who likes to wear loud suits and ties, speaks with a slight impediment and whose long, grey hair is teased so high that Keith Richards called and he wants his hairstyle back. But the movie misses its mark, mainly on plot and pace.
Thankfully, it has got at least one engaging performance in Hoffman's co-star Natalie Portman, who plays Molly Mahoney, the wannabe classical composer-turned-toy store manager to whom Magorium wants to hand the business over so he can take off for that big Playdoh set in the sky, euphemistically speaking.
The bad news is that the Mahoney-Magorium relationship is really it as far as the story goes. With little in the way of conflict or drama -- but plenty of eye candy -- that's a very long time to sit in a movie theatre waiting for something to happen.
It never really does.
Once Magorium has convinced Mahoney, a gamine-like creature with slicked back short hair and tomboyish outfits, that he's actually going to leave this mortal coil, they embark on one last fun day together that includes dancing on bubble wrap in a park and other silly exploits.
Jason Bateman (Arrested Development) is respectable enough but ultimately wasted, given his comic timing, in a small role as an uptight accountant who arrives to get Magorium's books in order. Zach Mills (Hollywoodland) is appropriately lonely as a nine-year-old collector of 400 hats, whose only human friend appears to be Mahoney.
Children thinking ahead to Christmas will go bananas for the 7,100-square foot set that substitutes as the Technicolor toy store that houses every plaything imaginable.
The younger set will also probably love Magorium, who has a zebra named Mortimer for a pet, although I found Hoffman's scene chewing a bit tiresome after a while.
On the positive side, Portman and Hoffman share a nice father-daughter screen chemistry that could be put to better use in a better film.
First-time director and screenwriter Zach Helm, who wrote another Hoffman film, Stranger Than Fiction, clearly seems out of his depth here, even though he's come up with an interesting premise.
If only he'd created some actual drama -- how about a villain for starters? -- to keep cinema-goers interested past the first half-hour.
Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory this ain't.
(This film is rated G)
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