Cinefantastique Online

Previously, I gave a brief preview of the festering awfulness that is MR. MAGORIUM’S WONDER EMPORIUM. With the film opening today, I’m back to provide specific details on what went wrong. In a nutshell, MAGORIUM is so insufferably pleased with itself – without doing a single thing to earn the self-congratulations – that you want to grab the film by the lapels and slap the silly smile off its face. Writer-director Zach Helm (who scripted the excellent STRANGER THAN FICTION) takes the “wonder” in his title for granted, and assumes his audience will as well; anyone who does not, is assumed to be a dreary old stick in the mud, unworthy of consideration.  The problem is that, when you take wonder for granted, it ceases to be wonderful; it becomes commonplace. For all its computer-generated effects and colorful sight gags, MAGORIUM is a dreadfully prosaic movie, lacking charm and grace.

The screenplay deliberately avoids any kind of serious plot construction. Instead, we are introduced to the four lead characters, each of whom has his own little problem. Mr. Magorium (Hoffman) wants to die and bequeath his store to Molly Mahoney (Portman), but the store resents being abandoned. Molly was a child prodigy at the piano, but as an adult she cannot finish the great concerto she wants to write. Eric (Zach Mills) is a talented you boy, but his peers think he is a weirdo. Henry Weston (Jason Bateman) is a sincere accountant, but he has no sense of wonder.

These story threads twist around each other, but they never weave together; some get lost in the tangle and are simply forgotten. In any case, none of them carries any weight, because the film’s allegedly whimsical attitude tells us from scene one that nothing really is at stake and anything can happen, so why should we ever doubt that everything will turn out happily for everyone involved?

Perhaps the major mistake in the script is that it never really invites us into its world; it simply introduces the Wonder Emporium as a fact of life and expects us to accept it. Our audience identification figure is Molly, who has been working at the store for years and already knows that it is a magical place. This denies the audience a proper introduction to the Emporium, one in which their eyes are gradually opened to its magical wonders.

The closest we get to this is Henry, but even this backfires. The accountant, who is supposed to be dull because he works with numbers, appears to be the only person in the whole city (or at least in the film) who does not know that the Emporium really is magical. This leads to a few decent sight gags, but it creates a weird situation in which Henry’s problem is not that he does not believe in magic; it is that he cannot see the obvious.

As a director, Helm only compounds his script problems.Several lamely written scenes are allowed to run on to no real point, and there are numerous instances of bad improv (or simply bad acting) that are treated as if they are cherished delights. One obvious low point occurs when Molly encourages Magorium to dance, and Hoffman lamely shuffles his feet for a few minutes in a totally non-choreographed bit of business that should have embarrassed the talented star. Adding insult to injury, Helm tries to pump the scene up with close-up reaction shots of Portman, gaping in wide-eyed wonder as if she is seeing something truly amazing. It is clear that all we are really seeing is Helm’s wished-for audience reaction: Portman’s reaction tell us it is amazing, so we should dutifully act amazed, too.

Suffering under this kind of non-direction, even Dustin Hoffman fails to deliver. It is sad to see one of the great actors of his generation reduced to giving a one-note performance based around little more than a silly voice. Miraculously, Bateman manages to emerge with most of his dignity intact. Although the film tries to stack the deck against his character, he emerges as the most likable of the four leads. Because he does not share the smug self-superiority of the others, Bateman’s accountant (derisively called a “mutant” by these supposedly sweet people) has a certain affable charm that the others lack. It is as if you saw MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET and found yourself identifying with the Natalie Wood character, who does not believe in Santa Claus.

The special effects try – but fail – to compensate for the directorial deficiencies. Lots of extra computer-generated imagery was added in post-production to increase the “magic” factor so sorely lacking in the script and performances. The result is a little bit like taking a stale cake and covering it with beautiful frosting – you can still smell the stench underneath the sweetness, and god forbid you should actually bite into the thing. We see this most obviously when Molly “conducts” the store’s magical wonders in what is supposed to be a grand, show-stopping moment. Poor Portman wanders aimlessly around, flapping her arms to no purpose. She looks extremely silly, but we are not supposed to notice, because the shots are overloaded toys coming to life around her; unfortunately, the CGI distraction is not enough to make us miss the obvious.

There is really only one element that captures the sweet sense of childhood joy that MARORIUM so desperately wants to achieve: an old-fashioned stuffed doll of a monkey plaintively reaches for for Henry when he walks by, but the accountant is too busy to notice. For some reason, the simple live-action effect touches the heartstrings more deftly than all the alleged CGI wonders of the rest of the film combined. These few brief moments provide a nice yardstick by which to judge what MAGORIUM should have been, and reveal just how badly it failed.

MR. MAGORIUM’S WONDER EMPORIUM (2007). Written and directed by Zach Helm. Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Natalie Portman, Jason Bateman, Zach Mills, Ted Ludzik, Mike Realba.