Richard N. Gladstein

The young apprentice of a magical, eccentric toy store owner learns to believe in herself, and in her friends, upon learning some grave news about the future. Molly Mahoney is the manager of Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, the awesome toy store owned by Mr. Edward Magorium. Molly was a promising composer and piano player when she was a girl, and now she is a twenty-three year-old insecure woman who feels stuck in her job. Among the costumers of the Emporium is the lonely hat collector, Eric Applebaum, who has only Molly and Mr. Magorium for friends. When the last pair of shoes that Mr. Magorium bought in Toscana is worn, he hires the accountant, Henry Weston to adjust the accounts of the Emporium. Furthermore, he claims that he is two hundred and forty-three years old and his time to go has come; he gives a block of wood called Congreve cube to Molly and asks Henry to transfer the Emporium to her name. Molly tries to convince Mr. Magorium to stay in his magical toy store instead of "going". —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Molly Mahoney is the awkward and insecure manager of Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, the strangest, most fantastic, most wonderful toy store in the world. But when Mr. Magorium, the 243-year-old eccentric who owns the store, bequeaths the store to her, a dark and ominous change begins to take over the once-remarkable Emporium. —Production A magical toy store that has been opened for many years is under the threat of stopping and closing forever because the owner is planning on leaving the living and putting the other workers in charge. The other workers have no idea how to operate the magical toy store. —RECB3

In 1903 London, following the dismal reception of his latest play (the play is taken down after a few days of opening night), Little Mary, Barrie (Johnny Depp) meets the widowed Sylvia (Kate Winslet) and her four young sons (George (Nick Roud), Jack (Joe Prospero), Peter (Freddie Highmore) and Michael (Luke Spill)) in Kensington Gardens. A strong, close friendship develops among them. He proves to be a great playmate and surrogate father figure for the boys, and their imaginative antics (they imagine whole worlds and create characters and play them with conviction. Injuns and the westerners. Exploration of Africa in the backyard. kite flying) give him ideas which he incorporates into a play about boys who do not want to grow up, especially one named after troubled young Peter Llewelyn Davies. Barrie gifts Peter his first diary and encourages him to write stories coming out of his vivid imagination. Barrie is shown to be friends with Arthur Conan Doyle (Ian Hart). Barrie's wife Mary invites Sylvia, her kids and her mother to dinner. Barrie misses meals at home and suggests that they loan their own cook to Sylvia, as she is short of helping hands in her own house. Although Barrie sees this family as wonderful and inspirational, people question his relationship with the Llewelyn Davies family. Sylvia was a widow: her husband died from cancer and left her with four boys to bring up on her own. Arthur makes Barrie understand that people are questioning his relationship with Sylvia and even her boys. Barrie brushes them aside and takes Sylvia and her boys to his summer cottage for the summer. This is where the script for Peter Pan takes shape. Barrie's wife Mary (Radha Mitchell), who eventually divorces him (she started an affair with Gilbert Cannan (Oliver Fox). When Barrie tries to reconcile she demands that he return home at the end of the rehearsals and stop his forays into the countryside with Sylvia's family), and Sylvia's mother Emma Du Maurier (Julie Christie), object to the amount of time Barrie spends with the Llewelyn Davies family (a grown man spending so much time with the kids, and that Barrie is hurting any future prospects that Sylvia might have for settling down into a married life again). Emma also seeks to control her daughter and grandsons, especially as Sylvia becomes increasingly weak from an unidentified illness (which started at the summer cottage). Along the way, Barrie goes on adventures with Sylvia and her boys. He too is a boy at heart and spending time with the family is special. Barrie takes those adventures he has with the boys and makes them into a play called Peter Pan. Peter blames Barrie for Sylvia's illness. Producer Charles Frohman (Dustin Hoffman) skeptically agrees to mount Peter Pan (The play demands a ship on stage, surrounded by huge amounts of water, which requires huge amount of money. But Barrie says that they can fake the water), despite his belief that it holds no appeal for upper-class theatergoers (doctors, lawyers, and so on with their wives). Barrie asks Charles to set aside 25 seats in the audience, scattered all over the place. George breaks his hand when Jack and Michael let go of the ropes helping him fly in the air (in the theatre). George insists that Sylvia undergoes medical examination, before he will allow the doctors to set his hand right. Barrie peppers the opening night audience with children from a nearby orphanage, and the adults present react to their infectious delight with an appreciation of their own. The play proves to be a huge success. Barrie is all set for his play, but when Peter arrives alone to the play (as Sylvia had a coughing fit and was in no position to attend), Barrie goes to Sylvia's house to check up on her and misses the show. Peter attends the play and realizes the play is about his brothers and Barrie. Mary attends the opening and realizes that Barrie could never have written anything like this, without Sylvia's family. She understands and apologizes to Barrie. Sylvia is too ill to attend the premiere, so Barrie arranges to have an abridged production of it performed in her home. He gets the actors, props and musicians together in the Llewelyn Davies house. At the end of the play, Peter Pan points to the back doors and implies that Sylvia should go off to Neverland. She takes the hands of her boys and slowly walks out into Neverland. The living room and back garden transform into Neverland and Sylvia continues to walk on her own. In the next scene, everyone is at Sylvia's funeral. Barrie discovers that her will says that he and her mother should look after the boys, an arrangement agreeable to both. The film ends with J. M. Barrie finding Peter on the bench in the park where they first met after Peter ran off from the graveyard. Peter is holding his book where he wrote the plays that he ripped apart and that his mother glued back together for him. Barrie sits down and puts his arm around Peter to comfort him. They both fade, and all that is left is the bench.

When Zack's famous girlfriend, Taylor, cheats on him with another boy and parts ways with him, he makes a bet with his friends to turn a socially inept Laney into their high school's next prom queen. She's All That is your typical high school prom king and queen story and the run in defending the star status in the upcoming election. High school hottie, Zack Siler is dumped by his prom-queen girlfriend, the equally attractive and extremely popular, Taylor Vaughan who fell for a second-hand world reject TV soap star who she met over the spring break. Having been publicly dumped, Zack defends his discomposure by stating that Taylor is all make-up and wonder-bra and he can make any ordinary girl a prom queen with a similar package. His high-school buddy, Dean Sampson, engages him in a bet following this statement and picks the geeky looking Laney Boggs out of the crowd as the girl Zack must transform into the new prom queen. Zack agrees since he has no option, but as time passes and Laney begins to transform, Zack begins to find her attractive. While all that falls beautifully in place, it's not your typical fairy-tale. Throw in Dean Sampson to complicate the situation, as when he first made the bet he never thought that Zack could rise to the challenge but looking at how Laney has transformed, it looks like Zack could be on a winning streak. —Sofea Shah In Harrison, the popular high school student Zack Siler is dumped by his girlfriend, the also popular Taylor Vaughan. She tells him that she met the gross reality show TV star Brock Hudson during her vacation in Florida and now she is dating him. His best friend Dean Sampson is with their friend Preston and makes a bet with Zack that he is not capable to turn the clumsy and unattractive student of Arts Laney Boggs into the prom-queen in a couple of weeks. Zack accepts the bet and approaches to Laney and her brother Simon Boggs. —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Freddie Prinze Jr. stars as a high school hottie who makes a bet with a fellow classmate that he can turn geeky Rachel Leigh Cook into a Prom Queen. Problems arise when hot shot Prinze becomes involved and in love with the transformed Cook. —Buffy <SurferBetty@worldnet.att.net> High school favourite Zach Siler is dumped by his prom queen shoe-in girlfriend for some slimey TV soap star. On the rebound he takes a bet from his best friend that he can take up with mousey bespectacled Laney Boggs and get her voted prom queen instead. Great friend, impossible task. Though once Laney scraps her glasses, does her hair, and gets into decent rags, Zach finds himself taking rather a lot of notice of her. —Jeremy Perkins {J-26}

Set in late 1979, Shane O'Shea (who narrates the story in flashback) is a 19-year-old gas jockey from Jersey City, New Jersey who lives with his widowed, conservative father Harlan and two younger sisters, Grace and Kelly, both of whom were named after Princess Grace by their late mother, who died when Shane was 12. An Irish-American kid tired of his working-class existence, Shane longs for a more exciting life across the river in New York, so he cuts his hair, dresses up, and and talks his two friends into going to Studio 54 one night. However, upon arrival, gay club owner Steve Rubell picks him to go inside (only after he takes off his shirt), and not his friends. Once inside, Shane is exposed to the glamorous, hedonistic playground that is 54, with plenty of drugs, alcohol, disco music, and sex to go around. Shane has such a good time at 54 that he makes plans to go back, much to his father's disapproval, so the next night, Shane borrows his father's car without permission and heads back to 54, where Steve hires him as a busboy. He quickly becomes friends with fellow busboy Greg Randazzo and his coat-check girl wife Anita, who, like Shane, aspire for bigger and better things: Greg wants to become one of the club's bartenders, since they make more money and have more "celebrity" status; and Anita wants to become a famous singer. Shane eventually moves out of his family's house after arguing with his father over his new job and moves in with Greg and Anita in New York, and they become a surrogate family to him. Shane even has sex in the club's infamous balcony with 54 regular Patti, a Southern starlet/model, on his first night as a busboy. Like Greg, Shane also wants to become a bartender, and after working at 54 for only a week, he gets that chance thanks in part to 54 regular Billie Auster, a decadent, sophisticated, cougar-like socialite/businesswoman who has a one-night stand with Shane while high on cocaine and marijuana (she passes out mid-intercourse as a result, but Shane continues to have sex with her anyway), and who Anita hopes can help jump-start her singing career since she knows everybody in the music business. While having sex with Billie in her penthouse bedroom, Shane mentions that he wants to be a bartender since one of the newer ones, Rhett, quit to become a model (presumably Billie had sex with Rhett too since she's upset about his sudden departure), and Billie asks him if he wants her to recommend him to Steve, which she later does offscreen. Shane's promotion angers Greg, since he wanted to become a bartender, and feels that he didn't because he wouldn't let Steve perform oral sex on him in exchange for said promotion (quid pro quo). Shane, now nicknamed "Shane 54" by his fellow bartenders, soon becomes a highly-paid quasi-celebrity at 54 and gets sucked into the club's decadent lifestyle: he mingles with New York's upper crust, he uses drugs, and has sex with random women (which leads to him getting gonorrhea) as he "raises his profile" and advances his "celebrity" status. However, Shane's new stardom doesn't protect him from being insulted when a guest at a Park Avenue dinner party he and Anita attend with Billie calls him a "gorgeous troglodyte" because he doesn't know who Errol Flynn is; nor does it protect Shane from being exploited when he does a Christmas beefcake photo shoot/interview with Interview Magazine and he discovers that the interview portion he did has been left out of the magazine, leaving him feeling sad and used because he wants to be taken seriously and valued for more than just his good looks and sex appeal. Shane's fame also causes problems with his friends and family, especially during the Christmas holidays. Greg, who now moonlights as a drug dealer, accuses Shane of being conceited and also accuses him of trying to have sex with Anita, since he caught Shane making a pass at her once before at their apartment . And Shane's father Harlan, whom Shane hasn't seen or spoken to since he moved out of the house, rejects Shane when he returns home to visit on Christmas Day because a family friend that got into 54 one night told him that she saw Shane doing drugs there. Shane does however experience some brief happiness during the holidays when he strikes up a romance with his dream girl (and fellow Jerseyite) Julie Black, a soap opera starlet determined to break into the movie industry. However, Shane's stardom, his relationship with Julie, and 54's life all come to an end on New Year's Eve. Shane discovers Julie at 54 with Roland Sachs, a casting agent who she plans to sleep with in order to advance her career, and Shane blows her off in disgust (ironically, since he basically did the same thing with Billie and others in order to become a bartender and advance his job/celebrity status). Elderly 54 regular Mona (aka Disco Dottie), a feisty, foul-mouthed, drug-using grandmother, dies of a cocaine overdose during Anita's debut performance. Shane is beside himself with grief, but Steve wants Shane to continue working as if nothing has happened. Shane refuses and gets into a near-physical altercation with Steve, forcing Steve to fire him. At the same time, the FBI raids 54 and arrests Steve for tax evasion, as he's been skimming money from the club's nightly take each night. Steve's bouncers find Shane and physically throw him out of the club, and Shane is then forced to leave 54 the same way he entered at the beginning of the film: shirtless, and now forced to use an old garbage bag to cover himself since he's not allowed back inside the club to get his wallet and other belongings. Julie passes by in a limousine, and after having a brief heart-to-heart with a now disgraced and humbled Shane, they part ways but agree to remain friends. In the film's epilogue, Shane reveals that Steve is eventually convicted and sentenced to eighteen months in prison for tax evasion (he is forced to sell 54 after being released, but the new owners let him stay on as a consultant). During that time, Shane continues to keep in touch with Julie, who moves to Hollywood and gets a small part in a movie. He takes business classes at NYU during the day and works nights managing a restaurant in Greenwich Village. His relationship with his father is improved, as he visits him and his sisters once a week. Shane, Anita and Greg, however, drift apart. Anita and Greg are still married and doing well; Anita finally manages to record and release an album with Casablanca Records to moderate success (some critics refer to Anita's album as "too disco"), and Greg gets a job in construction (after getting six months' probation for dealing drugs). The three of them reunite at the recently reopened 54, where Steve is hosting a one-night welcome-back party for all of his old friends and employees after his release from prison. In the end, 54 closes for good in 1986, and Steve dies of AIDS in 1989 at age 45. Shane notes that although everybody assembled at 54 that night pretended that nothing had changed, they all realized that "the party was over".