Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

This isn't up to my usual standard of quality, but we really enjoyed the movie, and wanted to share. We saw Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium last week on Friday and it was a very good movie. The kids liked it because it was in a toy shop and there was lots of cool stuff happening, and nothing scary happened except one little bit that was only a tiny bit scary. No, two little bits, I guess, because two littles are telling me about two different parts they thought were scary, but they weren't scared of the same part.

Mostly, it's just really great. It has a very good message, which is that wonder and magic have to come from you believing you can make them, and you can make friends and make the world a cooler place if you believe in yourself. Plus, there wasn't any stupid love stuff in the movie (even we older parts appreciate it when they don't tack on a romantic subplot just to have one, and this movie stood up without it).

And we weren't the only ones who really enjoyed the movie. We saw it the night it came out, in a theater filled with kids (age range: looked like 3 to about 12). The kids were totally focused on the movie the whole way through. All the adults in the theater seemed to really enjoy the movie too (except one, who was the kind of adult who doesn't turn off their cell phone ringer, and then takes FOUR CALLS while sitting in a movie theater).

One of the things I enjoyed was that they didn't bother to water down the vocabulary, so lots of the characters used big words, and that was nice in a kids' movie, that they didn't expect just because you're a kid, that you're stupid. But at the same time, they also seemed to know which things kids were likely to understand (or, you know, grown ups) so at the credits, which I missed most of, I saw that instead of just putting the Hollywood names for different parts of the crew, they described what they did (like, "People who pointed the cameras at other people" or something).

It was a really good movie, and I'm hoping I can get to see it again sometime very soon, in the theater and everything.