Drum roll please…I recently watched Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium.
I know it is my own fault. I take full responsibility for this one. It was Christmas Eve, I had returned to my castle early from work and it seemed like a good idea. When I saw the credits I thought to myself: “Natalie Portman is hot, Dustin Hoffman was in Tootsie and Jason Bateman was Teen Wolf (Two). How bad can it be?” To keep my answer to that question short, this movie was bad enough to be a CBS sitcom.
The basic premise of this film is that a 250 year-old toy shop owner (Hoffman) has decided he is going to die Elvis-style (substitute a chair for the can) within a couple of days and hires an accountant (Bateman) to value his business so he can give it to his apprentice (Portman) so one of his customers who collects hats and has no friends (Zach Mills) can continue to play with the toys.
As the accountant goes through Mr. Magorium’s books he discovers that the store has been open for one hundred years without a business license, there have never been any taxes collected or paid, there is an undocumented biographer with a handlebar mustache living in the basement, and Mr. Magorium has an IOU from Thomas Edison that was never collected. Of course, in the world of “Wonder” none of this matters.
Editorial Note: I have to admit that the best part of this movie was the thirty or so minutes I was asleep. So, some of the aforementioned local and federal regulatory issues could have been addressed during my slumber. Additionally, crucial plot information could have been missed and it is possible the secrets of the magic toys and Molly Mahoney’s (Portman) Dutch-boy haircut could have been explained. However, I think this is highly unlikely.
I am still not clear on why Mr. Magorium decided to value a business he was giving away to his apprentice. And it seems odd that Mr. Magorium decided to give his business away to an apprentice that is only mildly interested in it and has aspirations for bigger and better things (Molly is also a pianist). Molly is a pianist. Mr. Magorium’s apprentice is a pianist. The pianist tickled the ivories. Pianist, pianist, pianist.
By the way, Mr. Magorium has a curious look and sound to him. He looks like Doc Brown and Einstein somehow co-fathered an offspring and his voice sounds like Daniel Stern’s after he took the forth brick to the head in Home Alone 2.
So, Mr. Magorium correctly called his shot and died on cue and once he did all of the toys in the store turned to black and lost their “wonder.” Somehow, Henry Weston (Bateman) turned into a real estate agent and handled the sale of the toy store but left the “wonder”-less toys in the store. Once a buyer was found hat collector Eric Applebaum (played by Zach Mills of Hollywoodland fame) swooped in to try to save the store and this led to the climatic final sequence when Henry realized that the store was full of “wonder,” Eric realized that his first friend was a middle aged accountant and Molly realized that if she performed some of the worst dance moves ever set to music and put on film she could bring the “wonder” back to the toys in the emporium.
So, I guess the moral of this story is only chase your dreams until such time as you are extremely close to achieving them and then make a last second decision to serve as day shift manager at a children’s toy store. "I don't want to grow up, I'm a Toys "R" Us Kid. There's a million toys at Toys "R" Us that I can play with."
Warren
No comments:
Post a Comment