Movie Review - Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

Mr. Magorium (Dustin Hoffmann) is 243 years old and it is his time to leave, so he is going to give his magical toy store to his store manager, Mahoney (her name is actually Molly Mahoney, but she's always referred to as Mahoney) played by Natalie Portman but before he can do this, he needs to find out what the store is worth. In this entire time, while he has saved every single receipt, he has never kept the books on any of it, so he hires an accountant named Henry (although he's referred to throughout the movie as "Mutant" - explained thru one of the many play on words that are made) to determine what exactly he would be giving Mahoney. The store doesn't like the idea of Magorium leaving, so it starts misbehaving by taking away all of the magic and now it's up to Mahoney and a young boy, Eric, to see if they can bring the magic back.

I'll start with the good things. This movie was visually very pleasing. All the bright colors and the fantastic special effects were fun to see what each new scene was going to bring to the table. And the story was really quite sweet. Jason Bateman as Mutant was definitely my favorite character and my favorite scenes he had with the sock monkey were just....heartbreaking. Jason Bateman can do no wrong in my book, so every scene he was in was the utmost enjoyable for me but not just because I like watching him, but because he genuinely did a good job bringing life to his character.

Now the annoying things. Mr. Magorium's voice was very grating on the nerves after about the first two scenes as it was the cross between Willy Wonka (a bit condescending) and Rainman (a bit ...on the slow side). While a satisfying ending, I think they could have given it a little more meat to the storyline to make the ending that much more enjoyable. I, personally, was not fond of the chapters to the story that were being announced to me before each major happenstance ("and THIS chapter is called ..."). And the happy moods that were displayed were that of the sickly over-bubbly happy that makes you want to punch them in the face.

Not sure this one needs repeated viewings, but I think if you're looking for a movie where you can just let your brain take a vacation (we all need this sometimes) and just open your mind and just enjoy the story as it unfolds, with the good things it has to offer, it's worth one viewing. This one is probably better to see on the big screen.

(Totally unrelated to the movie, just thought I'd mention that the ONE scene where Natalie Portman is shown wearing makeup and is actually dressed like a woman - instead of the little girl dressing like a little boy for most scenes they portray her as - she looks so much like Keira Knightley, you're wondering for a moment if Keira was doing a cameo.)

Vixy :]