By Steven Loeb
Writer and director Zach Helm tries and tries (and tries again) to convey a sense of wonder and magic in his feature debut, “Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium.” Helm, who also wrote last year’s “Stranger Than Fiction,” tells that anything and everything can and will happen, if you only believe. While he certainly trusts in his own power to be whimsical and fantastic, Helm fails to convince that there is anything truly original in this recycled and, ultimately, tame movie, which continually pretends to be eccentric and unconventional, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Although this is a movie aimed at young children, viewers hope upon entering for something that would have challenged them as children, dared them to dream and defied expectations. Instead, viewers saw a movie that could not serve up anything more daring and quirky than having the characters jump up and down on a bed in an effort to show the audience just how rebellious and individual they are. What is most offensive about this movie and others like it is that they pretend to be about outrageous characters that do not fit in society, who create their own rules, in their own universe just to show the world that they can have the last laugh. But Helm refuses to go the extra step and really challenge any of his audience’s boundaries by showing something that hasn’t been put on screen before.
Magorium, played by Dustin Hoffman with a combination of Albert Einstein hair and a Cindy Brady lisp, is supposed to be 243 years old, and, yet he is in pretty good health and shows no signs of slowing down. Why, then, is he leaving the store after running it for over 113 years? Because he ran out of shoes, of course! Magorium has a tendency to throw paper airplanes and, at one point in the movie, he dances on bubble-wrap. Is this really supposed to be enough to convince viewers that this character is not just a copy, modeled after better, more creative characters? One cannot help but think of Willy Wonka or Pee-Wee Herman, among others, who had wonderful wackiness, and never had to prove it in scenes that, much like this movie itself, so over-emphasize their “originality” that they cease to be original at all.
Helm’s seeming fear of pushing anything in his script further than he has to dooms this movie. Is it enough that Mr. Magorium just has a zebra in his office? Magorium throws a ball at it, and yells, “fetch.” The zebra does nothing. “Stupid zebra,” Magorium mutters. This is a small exchange, but it epitomizes the entire movie. It starts out with such promise, but never actually delivers with anything more than the bare minimum. The whole movie is like the beginning of a good joke. Having a zebra running should be the set-up, not the joke itself. Where is the punch line? Wouldn’t it be funnier if the zebra actually did something? And this is where Helm proves his inability to be the next Rohald Dahl or Dr. Seuss, though these are the types of authors it would seem that he would like to compare himself to. They are the kinds of writers who can conjure up images both familiar and new, out of worlds they themselves make up. Unfortunately for Helm, everything in his movie seems borrowed and reused, right down to the plot, dealing with the “suspense” over whether or not Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium will eventually go out of business now that Magorium has decided to “leave.” Will it be saved by Magorium’s assistant, played by Natalie Portman? Will the accountant, played by Jason Bateman, eventually learn to loosen up and have fun? It should be a surprise to no one, not even the smallest child in the theater, what will happen. Once again, Helm offers audiences exactly what they have come to expect, offering little in the way of surprises.
In the age of computer-generated barnyard animals spewing pop culture references faster than you can say, “refund,” this is the opposite, and it’s just as bad. This movie tries so very hard to be imaginative that the seams show all over the place. It is just as self-aware as any other current children’s movie, the only difference being this movie pretends it isn’t. You can’t fake whimsy, and, if you try to, it makes everything on the screen seem even phonier.

With its fantastical setting and over-the-top characters, “Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium,” featuring Jason Bateman (left), strives to capture the eccentricity of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” but does not succeed. (AllMoviePhoto.com)