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83At its best, the movie makes you feel like a kindred spirit.
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75Hoffman has countless characters inside of him, and this is one of his nicest.
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75Twenty or 30 minutes into Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium the urge to flee may rise within you like an oceanic tide. But stick with it. The film is very sweet--in fact it represents the dawn of a new sport, Extreme Whimsy.
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75Helm gets huge bonus points for noticing everything that's annoying about modern children's films and including none of those things in his movie.
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75Kids will enjoy the experience overall: It's a little messy and undercooked, but still vastly more imaginative and entertaining than junk like "Fred Claus."
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75It's not "The Wizard of Oz," and its cotton-candy fantasy of a story line is definitely aimed at very young children. But it's well made, and adults likely will find themselves yielding to its gentle, whimsical charm.
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70Credit production designer Therese DePrez and set decorator Clive Thomasson for the marvelous setting, a charmed building with a life of its own.
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63This isn't your usual kiddie fare: Beneath the initial glare and blare is a quietly literate script by first-time writer-director Zach Helm that deals directly with big issues like believing in yourself and living on after a loved one passes away. But is it heavy? Not really.
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63Writer/director Zach Helm, who wrote "Stranger Than Fiction," achieves bursts of charm and whimsy, but not quite enough magic to elicit a consistent sense of wonderment.
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63Semi-wonderful at best.
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60Structurally it's a bit ragtag, but, as your mum would say, it has its heart in the right place. For all its wilful oddness it's enchanting, imaginative and genuinely moving.
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50For all its playful touches and neat-o nostalgia for nondigital entertainment, the whimsy feels forced.
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50It's hard to escape the feeling that what Zach Helm's directorial debut really wants to be is "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." But where Roald Dahl's story was brilliantly eccentric and respectfully unsentimental, Helm's is heavy with strained zaniness and hazy morality.
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50There isn't anything terribly exciting or original on offer in the somewhat poky directing debut of screenwriter Zach Helm.
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50In this G-rated movie the effects are gee-whiz, with live giraffes amid the stuffed animals and bouncy balls so manic that they could use some Ritalin.
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50About a magical toy shop, but it has some of the sadder moments I've seen in a movie all year.
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50There's something a little annoying about a movie that tries this shamelessly to be endearing and family friendly.
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Helm's pacing is as pallid as his palette is vivid, and for a movie that celebrates wonder and strangeness, the whole enterprise feels coy and half-baked.
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50While endearingly heartfelt and G-rated to boot, its storytelling suffers from a lack of locomotive force and characters that feel disappointingly two-dimensional.
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50If the concept is ingenious, its execution is erratic.
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50Sprinkles in charming moments but ultimately doesn't evoke enough wonderment to overcome its tongue-twisting title and completely win over adults along with kids.
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42The idea of a toy store as a living, responsive being is a good one, but Helm doesn't take that idea to imaginative places.
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The film's one saving grace is Bateman, the only actor on set who seems unwilling to give himself over to Magorium's philosophy that the key to a fulfilling life can only be found in pathological regression. Maybe he just needs more whimsy in his life.
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30The movie, directed (and written) by Zach Helm in grotesquely bright colors, means to approach the creepy wonder of Roald Dahl but gets only the creepy part right.
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25For a movie built around a brightly-colored, magical toy store, Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium is surprisingly forgettable. In fact, it's most wondrous feat is just how it manages to waste good actors and fine performances.
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0Mr. Magorium, who is 243 years old (so are his jokes), is a cross between Willy Wonka and Geppetto, but Hoffman plays him with little more than a goofy dumb lisp, achieved by tucking his lower lip under his upper teeth, so that he looks just as rabbity-stoopid as he sounds.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 6 out of 15
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Mixed: 1 out of 15
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Negative: 8 out of 15
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