Toy story

>> Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium
is cheesy and old-fashioned but not
entirely unsatisfying

by MALCOLM FRASER

The directorial debut of Zach Helm, who wrote last year’s Stranger Than Fiction, takes place in a magical toy store where children frolic to their little hearts’ delight. Dustin Hoffman plays the titular character, Mr. Magorium, as a sort of Pee Wee Herman/Willy Wonka figure, with natty suits and an Einstein-esque mop of hair. Natalie Portman is Molly, his perpetually bemused shop assistant who also happens to be a frustrated composer.

The plot is set in motion when Hoffman hires Jason Bateman as the store’s accountant; facing mortality at the age of 243, the magical toy provider wants to get the store’s books in order to pass on ownership to Portman. Hoffman’s impending demise, Bateman’s uptightness and Portman’s self-doubt cause the store to start losing its magic.

Helm deserves some credit for originality, of sorts: his script seems to be a conscious attempt to revive a kind of charming, pre-ironic-age fable where the post-modern tricks and winking adult asides of typical 21st-century kids’ films are jettisoned in favour of old-fashioned whimsy and wonder. That’s all well and good, but the film is strangely underwritten, with subplots arbitrarily abandoned and characters sorely underdeveloped. This neglect is especially surprising considering that Stranger Than Fiction, if nothing else, was structurally sound.

The film is the culmination of the three leads’ recent pattern of bizarre professional choices. Hoffman’s late-career rejuvenation seems to involve accepting weird roles—whether it’s in a good film (I Heart Huckabees) or a terrible one (Perfume)—and then throwing himself wholeheartedly into them. He plays Magorium with an affected childlike innocence (that doesn’t play that well in the post-Michael Jackson era) and speaks with a bizarre and annoying lisp. Bateman’s performance is set firmly on cruise control as an uptight bean-counter, and Portman doesn’t seem to know quite what she’s doing in this mess—for which I can’t say I blame her.

But having said all this, damned if Helm isn’t able to tug on the old heartstrings with a cheesy yet effective finale. If kids still exist out there who are old enough to pay attention to a story, but haven’t yet been infected with world-weary irony, they—and only they—will get some enjoyment out of this.

Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium
opens this Friday, Nov. 16

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