Review of Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (2007) by Jamie S — 06 Feb 2013

This is a lovely kids film. It's full of magic, bright colours, fun and quirky toys and strange happenings at a magical toy store. It's a visual feast for a kid's imagination. Hoffman gives a turn as Mr Magorium in his final days as owner of the wonder emproium. With "wacky" hair and a convincing lisp Hoffman creates a wonderfully eccentric character comparable to Gene Wilder in Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory.

Portman is alright in her role as Molly Mahoney who is manager and future owner of the Emporium. Her side story of being a child piano prodigy is cute and the music is wonderful but on the whole her character pails in comparison to the caricaturist Mr Magorium.

I was quite impressed with the young actor Zach Mills and equally with Jason Bateman, both who gave charming performances.

The main problem I had with this film was the ending. It was abrupt and simply put the wrong place to end this story. The film itself is told in chapters so I understand why they chose to end it at the beginning of Mahoney's 'reign' of the store, but in terms of overall structure and pace it felt like an end just for the sake of making a 90 minute kids film.

A wonderful cameo from Kermit the frog was a surprise and overall this film brought a smile to my face. I thought it touched the subject of death extremely well and the creative approach to visualizing Mr Magorium's death was beautiful.

On the whole a nice film but definitely not worthy of being ranked amongst the "classic" family films.