>BY NATE BELL

"Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium" is the kind of warm, mushy, predigested pap that haunts theaters every year around this time, and it nearly pulls a muscle trying to arouse a sense of wonder. It inspires nothing so much as tedium, punctuated by moments of mild amusement.

Dustin Hoffman, fitted with frosted eyebrows and affecting a slight lisp, plays Edward Magorium, the 243-year-old proprietor of an enchanted toy store that also doubles as a daycare center. (The throngs of omnipresent children who populate this bustling indoor playground look like refugees from a McDonald's commercial.) Personnel include Molly Mahoney (Natalie Portman), the pert manager who never lived up to her promise as a classical pianist, the talented but lonely 9-year-old Eric (Zach Mills) and Henry (Jason Bateman), the standoffish accountant to whom the nickname "Mutant" is lovingly applied.

The film's deepest secret is that the store is actually a sentient being that feeds on love - it turns from rainbow bright to mausoleum gray when Magorium suddenly announces his impending retirement from the world of the living. Will the staff lose their sense of childlike awe and let the Emporium go to seed? Will Henry loosen up and recognize the magic in front of his eyes? Will the audience stay the full 94 minutes to find out?

Zach Helm, chief architect of the frothy "Stranger Than Fiction," wrote the screenplay and takes the directing mantle as well, his first time behind the camera. As screenwriter, he shows an aptitude for recognizing and exploiting family-film clichés, from Magorium's whimsical speeches on the importance of wonderment to the dizzying, overelaborate climax. As director, he seems to lack confidence in his own message, and lets the busy special effects (e.g., a handball with a 50-foot circumference) do most of the heavy lifting.

Helm's smartest decision was to appoint a largely appealing cast. Hoffman, playing a poor man's Willy Wonka, once again proves he can be the life of the party without seeming like an attention hog. Portman is luminous as usual in the same cute haircut she sported in this year's "The Darjeeling Limited." Bateman, in the most undernourished role, manages a few grace notes, mostly having to do with the subtle affection in his puppy dog eyes. And Mills, who bears an endearingly vacant expression, has some of the precociousness of a young Barry Gordon (see 1965's "A Thousand Clowns").

Nothing - not even the sporadically inventive production design - can provide the requisite light touch, and the film seems destined to take its place among the detritus of the holiday season. It does not bode well when the most disarming moment involves a character that the filmmakers can't even take credit for: the estimable Kermit the Frog, who jumps in for a brief cameo before leaving "Mr. Magorium" to its own devices.

Nate Bell is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer.

review>

MR. MAGORIUM'S WONDER EMPORIUM

>G
>Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Natalie Portman, Jason Bateman, Zach Mills.
>Director: Zach Helm.
>Running time: 1 hr. 34 min.
>Playing: Area wide.
>In a nutshell: Holiday fantasy is candy-colored corn.