The Portable Door review – Harry Potter-ish YA fantasy carried by hardworking cast – The Guardian
Adapted from Tom Holt’s 2003 young-adult fantasy novel, it is a satisfactory try at kickstarting a brand new Harry Potter-style franchise set in a fusty-quirky establishment, dosed up with further Gilliamesque grotesquery. Co-produced by the Jim Henson Firm, the manufacturing design is poky and intense, and the solid – with Christoph Waltz and Sam Neill larking it up – give it their all. However amid all this litter, it generally has hassle shifting its story ahead.
The Moveable Door has a pleasant conceit: the venerable London company of JW Wells & Co is answerable for engineering all of the every day incidents of coincidence and serendipity that occur in city life. Not that wet-behind-the-ears intern Paul Carpenter (Patrick Gibson), determined for any gig, is aware of the corporate’s raison d’etre when he indicators up. He seems to don’t have any discernible skills in any way, not like his fellow beginner Sophie (Sophie Wilde), whose skill as an empath is quickly put to make use of in manipulating the unsuspecting public. So he’s relieved when CEO Humphrey Wells (Waltz) duties him with discovering a magic door that has gone awol someplace within the grotto-like premises.
Director Jeffrey Walker blazes at a enjoyable clip, with the wide-eyed Paul always stunned at this company Hogwarts, filled with spooling dot-matrix printers and arbitrary guidelines, like by no means staying previous 5pm. However this whimsical feeding frenzy steadily smothers proceedings; with the necessity to maintain Wells’s wider scheming hidden, it doesn’t snag our curiosity a lot with how his skulduggery would interface with the fashionable Muggle world (briefly, he has very up to date designs on increasing the corporate’s mission of “affect”).
So as a substitute the movie stays weirdly fixated on the entire door factor, a largely meaningless MacGuffin with an indication marked “madcap” hanging off it. If the stress glints on and off, although, The Moveable Door by no means fully loses its edge, thanks largely to an irascible Neill as Wells’s right-hand man, and a sharp-tongued sensibility paying homage to Roald Dahl. Nevertheless it doesn’t really feel like fairly sufficient to present it a everlasting seat on the YA excessive desk.
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