Of the many types of family films, perhaps my favorite is the kind in which the characters inhabit a fantasy world that exists in parallel with the regular one, a world where slightly different rules apply, and fanciful things may be found. I am thinking of films as beloved as The Wizard of Oz, or as dreadful as The Cat in the Hat. This is such a film. Played by Dustin Hoffman, who has lately specialized in playing eccentric wise men, Mr. Magorium is a man of some 240-odd years who presides over an urban paradise that appears as an ordinary toy store. Writer-director Zach Helm did the same sort of fantasy/reality blend in his last movie, Stranger Than Fiction, though here a more family audience is targeted.
It reminded me somehow of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Hoffman is a decent variation on the Gene Wilder character, an eternal optimist who thinks he’s found his successor in his less-confident assistant, a prim young woman (Natalie Portman) who worries that she lacks “sparkle.” As there must always be, there is a boy who is kind and lonely, though eccentric as well. The little store is full of wonder indeed, like the fish mobile made with real, wriggling fish, though the accountant hired to assess the store’s value doesn’t see it.
I’d like it if the movie were more about the store itself than the characters’ attempts to grasp the power of positive thinking, but on the whole there’s enough originality here to please, and the script is pleasingly free of attempts to be hip.
IMDB link
reviewed 12/01/07
No comments:
Post a Comment