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Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium Dumborium Grade: C
Director: Zach Helm
Screenplay: Helm (Stranger Than Fiction)
Cast: Dustin Hoffman (The Graduate), Natalie Portman (Closer)
Rating: G by John DeSando, WCBE’s It’s Movie Time Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium is Mr. Magorium's Wonder Dumborium, a pastiche of clichés about "believing" in magic in order for the toys in this wonderland to come alive. Although Mr. Magorium (Dustin Hoffman) is 243 years old, almost as old, it seems, as the actor playing him. He seems able to live another couple of centuries except that he's decided to die on Saturday.

If this sounds like Harold and Maude without the sex, it is because like Maude, Magorium is voluntarily outta here, she so Harold can go out and love some more and he so store manager, composer Molly Mahoney (Natalie Portman) can inherit the emporium. Beyond some sentimental notions about appreciating the wonder of one's life, this lifeless fluff mines no new Christmas-spirit themes and succeeds in making even toys boring.

After Portman's wicked turn in Closer, I can't believe she'd accept an insipid role where she puts on a fake smile while vigorously conducting the magic orchestra of boring, albeit color-saturated toys (Buzz Lightyear is light years away). She's much better at pole dancing, and Hoffman is much more palatable as a rain man or a clueless college grad.

Let me call my buddy, Bad Santa, for some laughs because this languid-leaning laugher is a wonder it's been released.