Hoffman brings the wonder to 'Mr. Magorium'

This movie, which Zach Helm wrote and directed, is having the same conversation with us. We're all accountants; Helm lives in a toyshop; and for the 90 or so minutes "Mr. Magorium" drags on, he keeps interrupting his tale to ask us to stop and smell the cuteness. Of course, the more the movie insists on imparting its lessons for living - "Your life is an occasion. Rise to it" or "What you need to believe in is you" - the more you feel like an accountant and the less ashamed you are.

This feels like both Wes Anderson on training wheels and severely medicated Roald Dahl - be happy or else - with Dustin Hoffman doing Mr. Magorium as a kind of doddering Willy Wonka. (You can imagine Bill Murray doing a nastier, boozier version for Anderson.) Hoffman is fun. He bops around the sets with his hair teased out and gelled (with, what, Krazy Glue?) and wears snazzy, well-tailored suits. One of the happiest sights in the whole movie is the soft-shoe he does on a sheet of bubble wrap. That's heaven to me. And since the emporium feels cramped and overstocked with stuff and kids (it's like half shop, half day care), all the wonder in the movie is Hoffman's.

The vividness is theatrical as opposed to cinematic. The camera seems to fly around the inventive sets but visually the store never comes to life. It is, however, alive and extremely unhappy that its ancient owner (he's 243 years old, but doesn't look a day past 67) wants to pass it on to Mahoney, the chic but uncertain second-in-command Portman plays. The closer we come to Mr. M's last day, the grayer the emporium's colors become. Eric, the store's 9-year-old clerk, played by Zach Mills, suspects this graying might have something to do with the appearance of Henry, that sparkle-blind accountant.