watching movies one cup at a time

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 cliché accountant jokes. And none of it is very interesting.

Sure, the movie TRIES to be interesting. But you can’t just base a whole movie on “Look, the toys move by themselves! Isn’t that wacky!!??”. And the films goes into Mr. Magorium dying so soon that you never develop any empathy for the characters. Mr. Magorium felt more like a cartoon character so him “leaving” really didn’t have much weight. Natalie Portman just seems to be complaining about nothing, alternatively hating the store and then loving the store for not really much of a reason. Jason Bateman as the accountant is just kind of there, I guess so the characters have someone to talk to/complain to.

Plus the film is just plain boring. It doesn’t have a good pace like the superior Charlie and The Chocolate Factory or the classic Mary Poppins. This is the directing debut for Zach Helm and it feels like he got caught up in the “wackiness” of the store instead of looking at the larger picture and making a interesting movie over all. I could see Mr. Magorium working much better as a book character than in a movie where everything is just too real.

Overall it’s not really a bad movie. Just a rather dull one. There is no “Wonder” in the Wonder Emporium.