MR. MAGORIUM'S WONDERFUL EMPORIUM (2007) ** Wow, someone really wanted to be Roald Dahl. Which is to say that there are several nice elements to it, but everything suffers because the presentation is so shallow, so superficial, so un-Van Gogh. The lead character is well written, with several excellent lines delivered perfectly by Dustin Hoffman. But even he-even Dustin Hoffman-strikes you as the wrong guy, a guy who majors in Wry trying to translate it all into an A on the Silly Exam. All of the casting's like that, too; you can see what they were thinking in the better moments, and wonder how they could have missed everything else. It's not painful and I imagine that there are people who really like it. I thought that there was a good stopping point an hour or so in-that they shouldn't have run even though it would have left some plot threads unresolved. Oh, yeah...does Jason Bateman redeem accounts forever, the way Patti Smith says the Rolling Stones did the white man? I'd have to say no, but what they call him does make a point...and it's good if it helps us look at individuals who have gone off the track and nonetheless can see the human inside who was a child...now if they could only do that...then they wouldn't be mutants in the first place, neh?
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