Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium
Starring: Natalie Portman, Dustin Hoffman, Jason Bateman, Zach MillsDirector: Zach Helm
Year of Release: 2007
In a word: Boring. I feel like the trailer did a bait-and-switch on us. If you watch the trailer for this film, it’s all about magic, bouncy balls, cutesy Natalie Portman, and how wacky everything in the store is. In retrospect there really isn’t much telling you what the actual story of the movie is. And when you watch it, all that wacky stuff from the trailer is in the first 15 minutes. The rest of the movie is Mr. Magorium telling everyone he is going to die, Natalie having a 23 yr. old mid-life crisis, a kid who has no friends, and an accountant who is pretty much there so they can make cliche jokes about accountants. After awhile it just turns into a pointless bummer with the inevitable sappy happy-ending where the main characters “find their joy again” or some such nonsense. Like many of it’s toys, the Emporium is just spectacle and fluff. Skip it.
