One of my favorite movies is The Pagemaster, a classic adventure you will never forget even when you get older. It is a story of Adventure, bravery, and facing your fears. And it stars two great actors who are never forgettable. Richard Tyler is just about afraid of everything, and he is driving his dad insane with his ridiculous fears. One day, his dad sends him on an errand and he ends up trapped in a library due to a fierce thunder storm. His life will never be the same again.The Pagemaster brings classic literature like Treasure Island, Moby Dick, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to life. It is a story about facing your fears and conquering them against all odds. I love how Richard befriends three books, Adventure, Fantasy, and Horror each with their own unique character personalities and each voiced by Patrick Stewart (Adventure), Whoopi Goldberg (Fantasy), and Frank Welker (Horror) all give the characters true life. The animation is great and I find it fun how Tyler goes from real world to cartoon world. The movie also sends a message to kids and adults, that reading is fun and enjoyable and that your imagination can take flight with a good story. The two main actors Macaulay Culkin and Christopher Lloyd make this movie magic. The Pagemaster will always be fun for me, and one day I hope to show it to my kids who I hope will benefit from it's messages.A great movie about overcoming fear and gaining power from the written word. 10/10 for The Pagemaster

This was my favourite film as a kid. Being born the year it came out, I think i spent the majority of 1998 watching it as that is when my brain developed enough to remember a movie. I honestly remember sitting there in my lounge room literally wishing there would be a sequel or a longer version somewhere out there because even as a toddler there were still parts of the film frustrated the hell out of me. I wanted to see Richard at school, get better sense of his lack of friends and worried, overly cautious nature. I wanted him to have a girl he liked, or someone he wanted to impress, that he could after his adventures with the books. I wanted more Christopher Lloyd. I wanted the areas of the journey he embarked upon to go longer than about 15 minutes each, I wanted more jokes and maybe a few more characters for them to meet along the way. I also would have liked more books to pop up, maybe like action or something like that. Even just a little cameo would have been cool.All that being said, what I was left with, I loved. More than anything. James Horner's score is easily my favourite of all time and summarises my awesome childhood. Macaulay Culkin was always my hero. I was delighted he was the star of this. It was a hell of a lot better than richie rich. Yeesh. The visuals were terrific and it really did have a sense of wonder. The very short runtime however, stopped it from being a real classic. Man oh man that was a small tragedy as a kid. It filled me with a rich sadness, because I didn't want the story to end. It did make me feel as hard as i think i ever felt as a child though, and for that, I cant fault it. Plus the bike scene made me want to jump 10 feet in the air with happiness.

The Pagemaster is a live action/animation hybrid movie about a young boy (played by Macaulay Culkin) who worries a lot about the world, being obsessed with death statistics and thinking through things twice. One day the kid is sent out to the store, but runs into a thunderstorm on the way and has to seek shelter in a library, where Christopher Lloyd plays a creepy librarian that has no bearing on the plot. While waiting for the storm to stop, the kid goes on to look at the books when he slips and hits his head, and is magically transported into a alternate animated world where books come to life and he has to learn some sort of lesson about... something.Look, the plot doesn't really matter. This film is first and foremost an attempt to try and make children read more books more than it is a coherent story. Once the kid gets transported into the magical world, he meets three anthropomorphic books with paper-thin personalities who guide him through a theme park ride of various famous book characters, where nothing feels like a cohesive narrative and none of these characters are given any sort of weight to them.Dr. Jekyll, Ahab from Moby-Dick and Long John Silver appear but their inclusion in the story has no bearing on the plot, and gives no indication of who they are, why they do what they do or why these are considered to be classic books. Why would Dr. Jekyll drink this potion to make him into Mr. Hyde? Why is Ahab out to kill this whale? Why is Long John Silver such a legendary pirate? None of these questions are even acknowledged, it is assumed that the viewer will be so curious of these one-note displays of out of water characters that one would just go pick up the book on that alone, but I don't really feel inspired to read at all by this.Because on top of being a confused narrative with tons of plot holes, poor pacing and very little character or meaning behind it, it's also just a bad propaganda film. When I was a kid I didn't even think about the fact that these characters were from books or that I could go read about them while watching this because nothing they did affected me or made me curious to look closer, and as an adult all it makes me want to do is hunt down better cartoons.Then there is also the attempt at some sort of second moral about overcoming your fears or something, but it makes no sense what so ever. So, what, this kid who is already clearly suffering from anxiety hits his head and is either transported into a dimension where serial killer mad doctors, pirates, dragons and sharks are constantly trying to kill him; or suffered major brain injury and had one hell of a scary fever dream depending on how you look at it, all while his dad and other kids make fun of him for being a coward, and this is supposed to help him somehow? Or is it supposed to be about how escapism can help you cope with your fears, but only escapism in fiction books and nothing else? It's very muddled and to me at least comes off as somebody's grand-dad complaining about "them kids these days being sheltered, unlike in my day", which isn't all that inspirational.The best thing one could say about this movie is that it has a remarkable all-star cast (albeit with less than remarkable performances at times), some decent looking animation and some flashy colors to distract kids with. However, the lack of a proper story, the manipulative attempts at shaming kids for their taste in media and a confused tone that can't decide if it's supposed to be cynical, whimsical or thrilling makes this end up as a forgettable and mildly unpleasant watch. Only recommended for the nostalgia value or for hardcore Macaulay Culkin fans.

Adding to the voices of those who found this movie awful, I can only add "Amen!" One question- the whole movie is devoted to showing the character how books can help him and early on the viewer discovers that he has never had a library card...how, then, did he get all the facts and statistics about accident probabilities that he was so obsessed with? And, what kid his age knows as much about accidents as the National Safety Council? The father character was complaining about his kid's obsession with safety and his fearfulness...OK, who put the "Safety Bike" together for the little bugger? The Caulkin character? Not even!! Utter hogwash...any good fantasy has at least a little believability factor...this one had zero from the outset. It struck me as a quickie film made to cash in on MC's popularity while it was still hot.