Piling on

I've seen something this past week that really ticks me off. And it has to do with the movie Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium. Not the film itself (more on that in a bit) but rather the reviews of it. To date, I've seen exactly one positive review of it, by MSNBC's Alonso Duralde (although fellow MSNBCer Courtney Hazlett gushes about it in passing). Everything else has been negative. No, negative isn't the right word. "Scathing" would be soft-pedaling it. The reaction to this film has been so unabashedly hateful and venomous that I am pretty much dumbfounded. Now, there's nothing wrong with a bad review if it's honest. But somewhere along the line, it turned into a contest--how to out-rip the competition. From CNN to Ain't It Cool, the reviews generally consist of escalating variations of "suck suck suck suck suck suck DIE!!!!" They generally spend their time coming up with various denigrating insults for the film without actually saying anything substantive about the film at all, and quite often don't even bother to get the name of the film right. To clarify: There's no way to tell if they actually saw the movie at all. The kicker for me came this morning when I found a column listing the 10 worst movies of all time because of Mr. Magorium, but then the author admitted he hadn't actually seen the movie, and wouldn't ever see it because it was so bad. Even though this is the kind of whimsical film he usually enjoys.

Huh?

I saw Mr. Magorium this weekend. I didn't fall in love with it, and really have to question the objectivity of those two writers from MSNBC. I also didn't hate it. It's a film that tries really hard, but doesn't quite pull off what it's attempting. The performances of Natalie Portman and Dustin Hoffman are inconsistent at best. The main child actor does a better job than Jake Loyd did in The Phantom Menace, but that's about it. Jason Bateman is awesome in what should've been a throwaway role. It's not a funny movie, per se, but it is clever and amusing. Most of the problems, I feel, stem from the fact that there's a first-time director at the helm, and he's out of his depth.

It's not a good movie, but it's not terrible, either. At best, it's okay, at worst, mediocre. That may well be damning it with faint praise, but it's a hell of a lot more honest of an assessment than most other reviews circulating out there. My full review should be up on RevolutionSF shortly, so I'll post the link when it goes live.

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