Sunday, November 25, 2007

Mr Magorium's Wonderful Schamorium: A Case Study

Mr. Magorium's Wonderful Emporium (I think that's how it's spelt) is wonderful case study as to how to turn completely weak scriptwriting into a film that would completely sweep the lowest common denominator off it's feet (read, pretty much everyone).

Let the classroom come to order. Welcome to 'Saving a weak script through treatment 101'.

Boys and girls, should you be given a script written by the laziest bastard in the world, Here's what you should do:

1) Eccentricity! If the main character is boring as hell, make sure that he is eccentric. Eccentricity lends an illusion of genius to the character minus the hassles of developing the characters of a genius.

2) Casting! Have big names like Dustin Hoffman and Natalie Portman play the lead roles. Surely the audience would not dare to admit that such great actors can perform so poorly. People will blame themselves for not seeing through the genius of these actors. I already am. On top of that, by casting actors with names that rhymes will definitely provide good chemistry. Notice the presence of Jason Bateman.

3) Visual effects... lots and lots of it. People love that shit.

4) A pathetic socially inept kid that is cute as hell... no one can resist that shit. Even I can't resist it... can't resist choking him.

5) Lots of furry moving toys that interacts with people... especially one that's dying to reach out to you.

6) Inspirational Phrases! Lines like 'Life is an occasion... rise to it', who can resist that. Remember, if you can't afford to pay a good scriptwriter, it always pays to have a good copywriter to cleverly inject such phrases into the script.

7) Magic! Always include magical elements and if possible, make magic the main theme of the movie. That way, whatever story problems you encounter can be solved through magic.

8) Etcetera! Throw in whatever you can think of.

Voila. I would actually say that pretty much everyone walked out of the cinema happy. Only me... maybe I'm just a big barrel of disphoria.

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