No, sorry but I didn't like it, probably because I'm not a child anymore. I know it's a movie about magic, but it doesn't deliver that sense of wow that it should. Plus, there is no regard to work, money, or respect for that matter. And while some things are acceptable and even touching if a little innocent child does them, they become rather annoying done by a grown up girl.
The plot is simple: Mr Magorium has a toy shop, but a magical one and he himself is magical and has lived for hundreds of years. Now he says that he's going to die, although it's not really clear why (but that could be ok, could be he just magically knows that his time is up). Mahoney works for him, running the shop since he doesn't actually seem capable of doing anything (maybe the old age is showing, who knows)
She was a musical prodigy but now she seems down because she can't compose her own concerto...
anyway. She's happy at the shop, surrounded by lots and lots of children playing. She's very comfortable with its magic, too.
Magorium hires an accountant, Henry, because he wants to leave the shop to Mahoney and doesn't know how much it is worth. When she learns that by leaving he actually meant dying, she's very upset and drags him into a hospital. They say he's fine, so she spends a whole day playing stupid and very annoying games to make him see what he would lose, but he's still adamant he has to go.
When he just dies (I guess, we don't really see it happen) the magical shop goes into depression and becomes all grey, and Mahoney is sad too and says that she is not magical and can't run the shop without him and puts it for sale.
In the end, she yells that she totally believes in Magorium's words and magic (she only believed that she couldn't do that), and they both see a wooden block move by itself, and she suddenly believes she can do magic and starts moving her hands like an orchestra director and the store is once again full of magic and colours. The end.
Details now.
There isn't a great mention of money, although we see a customer actually paying. Magorium has never paid taxes in two hundred years, and although the store is always full the children go there to play, so one can wonder if many people would actually buy the toys or simply take their kids there to play. Sure, it's much easier when you don't have to pay any kind of taxes whatsoever.
And yet this shop is in our world, its customers are regular people, so that is a bit... oh well, let's move on, I could have accepted that, it was actually Mahoney that annoyed me to no end.
She kept being rude to the accountant, calling him a mutant like Magorium did, and yelling at him that he only knew about work, that he couldn't see anything else, and blah blah blah, which again is very easy for someone who doesn't have to care about money at all, but it's also annoying and disrespectful for all those people that have to care about that. He was simply doing his job, he had been hired for a reason and he wanted to do it. What was so wrong about that?
Also, why had he been hired in the first place? She was supposed to keep the shop, so what did it matter how much it was worth?
The day she spent with Magorium: they went into a shop that sold mattresses and started jumping on them with their shoes on. They also annoyed other working people, and this was her idea of the joy of life... causing troubles to regular people trying to make a living.
Magorium gives her a wooden block to help since she can't compose her own concerto, but it does nothing. Why? Later, it flies everywhere after she simply states that she believes in Magorium's magic. She always believed in it, so why it never did anything before?
As upset as she may be - and that I can understand, why put the shop for sale? Just keep it there in Magorium's memory, instead of selling it to someone that will surely use it for space alone. That's just heartless. I mean, in reality it would be better to sell it instead of paying taxes for something that you're not using, but since they never pay anything, what's the point in selling it?
The poor Henry is mistreated the whole time, as if working, being serious and thoughtful were terrible faults. He was never a bad man, only a grown up with a job to do.
Then there's Eric, and his character was wasted here, because he was a sweet kid but he doesn't really do much and everyone seems to kinda look down on him. Sure, Magorium always tells him he has a nice hat, but he doesn't even look at him, the man seems oblivious of anything. Later on he even tells him that he has a nice hat while talking on the phone, which would have broken my heart as a child. Eric is little, not an idiot. He's very easygoing so he doesn't care, but I would have.
The scene when Eric has to keep his promise to his mum and actually try to make a friend so he starts talking to Henry is actually quite sad, because he will keep on having no friends, as proven by the fact that when later on his mother finds him playing with Henry she's annoyed and sends the man home immediately. Quite good, there, it's not ok to come home to see your child in his bedroom playing with an adult man you've never seen before.
By the way, that scene was forced, he was all serious a moment before and then, simply because he tried on a joker's hat, he started jumping around in the child's bedroom playing like a baby.
It's said though that Eric still has no friends. Being at the shop all day long indeed is not enough, he is always by himself and this doesn't change.
Anyway, it was good that there was no unnecessary romance, since it wasn't that kind of movie and it would have been forced, but still I didn't like it.
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