(photo from IMDB.com)

I don’t get to watch many movies when they’re first released (it’s a two-hour drive to the nearest theater), so I watch a lot of movies on pay-per-view, or I get them through Netflix. I just watched Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, and despite some bad reviews, I thought it was fun, and it had a great message: “Your life is an occasion. Rise to it.”

Something often happens to many of us on the way to adulthood–we lose faith in the powers of imagination we had as children. But somehow the 243-year-old Mr. Magorium (played by Dustin Hoffman in an offbeat role that reminded me of his talent in Tootsie) has escaped that trap, because his store is filled with magical toys, and he spends most of the movie trying to convince his 23-year-old store manager, Molly Mahoney (Natalie Portman), that she has all the magic she needs to take over his business.

But Molly’s going through what a lot of us go through. She’s “stuck.” She’s lost her “sparkle.” When she was a child she was a music prodigy full of potential and no fear of fulfilling it, but now that she’s an adult she can’t seem to finish the piano concerto she’s been working on. Chopsticks is about all she can manage, so she thinks “It’s time to get serious. It’s time to get practical.” Sound familiar?

“Practicality” has its place in the adult world, but so does “play,” and the joy of this movie is the reminder that the happiest adults are the ones who haven’t forgotten the power they had as children when they believed in their God-given gifts to dream and to create, and when they believed that their life truly was an occasion to celebrate.

If you’re feeling “stuck” or all together too grown up for your own good, I recommend a visit to Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium.