Dustin Hoffman and Natalie Portman in Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium Courtesy of Fox Walden

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The zebra wrangler is perplexed. He's arrived this April afternoon on the Toronto set of the new family film Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium with a trained zebra ready to play Mortimer, the house pet of the title character (Dustin Hoffman) and owner of a magical toy store. The wrangler has also brought a backup zebra in case the first one doesn't work out, and a pony to keep the zebras calm. But the film's writer-director, Zach Helm, wants the zebra to do… nothing.

"The joke is, Mortimer is the world's worst pet. He's virtually non-responsive," says Helm, the screenwriter of Stranger Than Fiction, who is making his directorial debut with Magorium's. "I just want the zebra to stand there. The trainer's having a hard time with that. Every time he asks me a question that starts with, 'Do you want the zebra to…,' I know we're going in the wrong direction." (Hence, the production company's name, Stupid Zebra Productions.)

Mortimer, however, is virtually the only still thing in this movie. The Wonder Emporium is a kind of living organism, 7,000 square feet (with 24-foot ceilings) of clanking, bubbling, whirling toys of every type, from every era. The set includes a tree (with tire swing), over 5,000 children's books (intended to be donated to charities at the end of filming), an enormous rocket ship, a sliding board, a wall-sized paint-by-numbers Magritte mural, and a barrel full of Superballs (which need constant replenishing as the crew grows ever more playful). Magorium himself is a 240-year-old wizard who favors colorful suits (including one in purple cashmere corduroy), a snow-white up-do, and wild eyebrows. The film's conceit is that, as long as he runs the store, anything can happen: Pull on one of the half-hula hoops embedded in one wall, and a whole hoop comes out; tug on one of the half-bike tires on another wall, and a bike will emerge. When the kid clientele play Duck Duck Goose, they do it with a real (and rather aggressive, it turns out) goose; when someone reads a book about a lemur, a lemur leaps out. But when Magorium decides to retire, the toys turn grey, leaves wilt on the tree, the laces come untied on the pair of giant shoes dangling from one wall, and the lights on the metal cars stuck into another wall go dim. It's up to his protégé, Mahoney (Natalie Portman), accountant Henry (Jason Bateman), and loyal customer Eric (Zach Mills) to save the Emporium.