REVIEW: The Portable Door [2023]

Rating: PG | Runtime: 116 minutes
Release Date: March 23rd, 2023 (Australia) / April 7th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Madman Entertainment / MGM+
Director(s): Jeffrey Walker
Writer(s): Leon Ford / Tom Holt (novel)

We do what we can.

En route to a barista interview in hopes of securing a job that will allow him to pay the half of the rent his roommate has neglected to supply, Paul Carpenter (Patrick Gibson) cannot help but get waylaid. First, it’s burnt toast and broken shoelaces. Then it’s strangers stopping him in the street and a dog stealing his scarf. The next thing he knows, Paul is standing in front of a door that says nothing but “Applicants” on it.

So, he walks in. Ignorant to the place and the job, he sits on the waiting room couch only to be called by name by Mr. Tanner (Sam Neill). Off he goes to meet the board of J.W. Wells—headed by Humphrey Wells (Christoph Waltz) and rounded out with characters played by Miranda Otto, Rachel House, and Chris Pang. The coincidences that brought him intrigue them. He starts working for them the next day.

We enter the world of Tom Holt’s book series alongside Paul as he walks into the Wells building despite still knowing nothing of what is in store. Director Jeffrey Walker and screenwriter Leon Ford’s The Portable Door moves us from unfinished construction sites to immaculate lobbies with employees who always seem to know more than they should (Jessica De Gouw’s Rosie) and oddities that cannot be easily explained (staplers that conjure extreme emotions on both sides of the fear-to-love spectrum, rooms of dot matrix printers and pneumatic tubes, and secret closets for “Goblins Only”). It’s there that Paul and his fellow intern Sophie (Sophie Wilde) begin to understand their as yet untapped magical powers as well as whom amongst upper management has their backs.

The film is a briskly paced adventure that balances the excitement of the main thrust (finding Humphrey’s lost portable door) and the intrigue of the underlying mythology well. There’s a lot of subterfuge as far as who to trust thanks to everyone being a bit scatterbrained and busy, but never enough to make subsequent rug pulls more than fun expository revelations.

The whole feels like previous Jim Henson production The Witches (the 1990 version) in this way with hidden agendas coming to light around the midway point so we know the difference between good and bad if not the complexities separating the coerced from the evil coercers. Practical creature effects are married with computer generated magic as fantasy horror collides with wholesome young romance under a comedically family-friendly umbrella.

Both Gibson and Wilde prove wonderfully endearing leads—awkward Paul and confident Sophie discovering who they are, what they want, and how they’ve been manipulated thanks to weird assignments, weirder bosses (Neill, House, and Waltz delight), and the infinite power of a door that leads everywhere. It’s just twisty enough to keep adults invested while remaining silly enough to hold the attention of any children too.

We want to see what it is that’s really going on and how far the villains pulling strings will go to profit off the skills J.W. Wells has provided for millennia as a silent partner thus far uninterested in credit. And like so many young adult fantasies, it’s the unwitting new guard who come in with the potential of foiling the dastardliest of plans with kind hearts and courageous love.