{"id":31374,"date":"2019-10-05T00:08:18","date_gmt":"2019-10-05T04:08:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=31374"},"modified":"2019-10-04T21:42:25","modified_gmt":"2019-10-05T01:42:25","slug":"the-pagemaster-1994","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/05\/the-pagemaster-1994\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pagemaster (1994)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>When I was a kid whenever councils or committees tried to encourage kids to read, they always invented some kind of mascot, and for me it was Cap’n O. G. Readmore. Every Saturday morning after the cartoons, he\u2019d show up to remind kids to read, and explain how much fun reading was. \u201cThe Pagemaster\u201d has good intentions but deep down it feels disingenuous and an awful lot like a glorified Saturday Morning special turned in to a big feature. At barely eighty minutes in length, it\u2019s a mediocre, dreary, occasionally boring film that you can\u2019t help but feel like it could have been shown as a TV movie.<\/p>\n

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A mix of \u201cNeverending Story\u201d and \u201cThe Wizard of Oz,\u201d Joe Johnston\u2019s mix of live action and animation, features nineties star Macaulay Culkin as Richard Tyler. Tyler is a kid who is afraid to take risks and often hears his dad bemoan why his son doesn\u2019t look for more adventure. When he sends Richard out for an errand, he\u2019s stuck in a horrible storm and takes shelter in a massive library. After being encouraged to apply for a library card by the weird library Mr. Dewey, Richard is lost in the library and falls passing out. When he awakens, he realizes he\u2019s animated\u2014er\u2014\u201cillustrated\u201d in a fantasy land and has to find his way back with the help of a trio of anthropomorphic, friendly books named Horror, Fantasy, and Adventure.<\/p>\n

For a movie that purports to want to encourage its target audience to pick up a book and read, \u201cThe Pagemaster\u201d never rises above being kind of preachy, and incredibly boring. The movie only has about seventy five minutes to hook in the audience, and the writers don\u2019t give us much of a reason to root for Richard beyond \u201cHey kids! It\u2019s Macaulay Culkin!\u201d We\u2019re not entirely sure why his character is so hell bent on safety, we\u2019re never given a reason why his parents are stressed out by his attitude, and the message is muddied in the finale. Is the moral to seek out adventures and always be willing to take risks? Is the moral that all the adventure we need is in a book and only a book? Is the moral staying true to yourself is true heroism?<\/p>\n

Who\u2014or what–is the villain of the movie? Is it illiteracy, or ignorance of the appeal of reading? And what do the books have to do with the overall resolution and the premise altogether? \u201cThe Pagemaster\u201d fancies itself an adventure about the joy of opening a book, but there\u2019s never a very interesting implementing of the concept. Even the inclusion of three comedic sidekicks that are literally talking books never quite gets the message across. That said, the animation is quite good, and I love the voice work from Whoopi Goldberg, Patrick Stewart and Frank Welker. They\u2019re just sadly wasted in what is a terribly forgettable and bland vehicle that, with a tad more imagination, might have been so much better.<\/p>\n