[Prudence]

We intended to see No Country for Old Men, but apparently it's not yet in wide release and we didn't feel like fighting traffic to downtown Seattle on a Saturday night, so we settled for Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium.

It was one of the most wonderful, sweetest, delightful movies I've seen in a long time. It just made me happy. It wasn't full of fart jokes or gratuitous violence or anything of that. Sure, it's totally appropriate for very young kids, but we loved it. There are little background bits here and there that amused me - like an overhead page in the hospital.

Even the credits were cute. First, it actually had an opening credit sequence, which is part of the movie-going ritual I actually miss. Second, the closing credits were actually cute. Not oh my gosh, make sure you watch them, they're amazing cute, but just really nice.

And neither Natalie Portman nor Dustin Hoffman was the slightest bit annoying. They were actually charming. That's magic all by itself.

Even the one "serious" theme was treated in a totally age-appropriate way, without shying away from it, but not making more of it than a child could handle.

Apparently it's an original script, but it felt like live-action children's book - of course, it was set up as "chapters" with a voice over, which contributed to that, but rather than taking me out of the story, I thought it just contributed to the impression of storytelling. Really really nice, wonderful storytelling. Not ooh amazing cinema, but a really wonderful children's story that these two adults wouldn't mind seeing again.

If you don't walk away from this movie with a smile, your heart is as cold and black as the coal Santa's going to leave in your stocking.