Homeschool Dad Blog

I don’t plan on making a regular thing out of movie reviews - we all know there are plenty of movie review sites out there. Also, because I generally only see movies months after they have been out on video, when I can get them free at the library.

However, we saw a free screening of Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium today at the local theater and this is one we will (eventually) add to our collection. The only thing I can liken it to is Willy Wonka on a smaller scale, and less absurd.

I don’t want to rehash this movie - in fact, my review is going to be more of a review of an idea in the movie.

In the beginning, when you are introduced to Molly Mahoney, it is said that she was looking for something inside of her that was bigger than her…. or something to that effect. Unfortunately the websites that quote movies missed that and some other important quotes from the film.

However, without spoiling the movie for all of you, Mahoney’s search is the central crisis of the movie. She believes in the magic of Mr. Magorium’s store, and with the sudden news of his coming departure her world falls apart.

Now Mahoney didn’t want the store. She wanted to be a composer but was, in her words, “stuck.” He gives her a wooden cube and tells her it is an important tool, and she believes it. He tells her he is leaving the store to her and that she can keep the magic alive, and she cannot accept it.

How true is this of us, particularly us Christians? We profess belief in a God who tells us he loves us, and we believe it. He tells us He created this wonderful world, and we beleive it. He tells us we can move mountains, and we falter. But perhaps that is what makes saints and prophets stand out from the rest - they believed they had a part, a purpose, in the grand and wonderful design they saw around them.

Consider also the part one plays in your community, and your government. It’s easy to watch in wonder when the system works, but so easy to fail to see your own part in it.

There lies my concern over one line in the movie - when the writers in trying to sum this all up fell back on the age-old lie, “You needed to believe in yourself.”

G.K. Chesterton put it bluntly in the beginning of Orthodoxy: “The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.”  For you see, the man who believes himself to be a chicken, believes in himself. The horrible singer in line at the American Idol auditions believes in themselves. The would be composer who insists a store is magic - even if she does not realize her own part in the magic - professes belief in the store, her mentor, or even the unseen magic - but she is not professing belief in herself.

Joan of Arc did not believe in herself, but her calling. Thomas Edison did not believe in himself, but that there was a better way to do things. They who did not believe in themselves, but rather placed their faith in their calling, their purpose, their place in the world - they are the ones who have moved the world.