Rotten Tomatoes score: 18%
When I reviewed Richie Rich about two years ago, I noted that Macaulay Culkin won a Razzie in 1994 in recognition of his performances in three movies: Richie Rich, Getting Even with Dad, and this one. That was an underrated movie, but all I had to say at the time about The Pagemaster was, "the less said the better."
Well, far be it from me to leave well enough alone.
This was a foray into the style of movie-making that combined live action and animated content, but unlike Roger Rabbit, this movie doesn't combine the animated and real-life characters in the same scene. Instead, it begins as a live-action movie, but then switches to animation after the first act.
I guess that was supposed to be enough of a gimmick to draw you in, because the story certainly wasn't worth telling. But you wouldn't know that to look at the Wikipedia article, a huge portion of which is given over to describing a dispute amongst the writers, the production staff, the studio, and the Writers' Guild of America over who was entitled to take credit for this masterpiece.
Macaulay Culkin plays Richard, a boy so pathologically anxious that he's too afraid to participate in such harmless pursuits as doing dangerous bike stunts without a helmet at a construction site. What a loser! His dad, Ed Begley Jr., wants him to toughen up, so he deploys him on a mission to buy nails at the neighborhood hardware store during a thunderstorm. Amazingly, this turns out to be a bad idea, and Richard has to take shelter in a local library.
It's one of those gigantic, cavernous libraries with multi-million-dollar frescoes painted on rotunda ceilings, no patrons, and a mysterious librarian (Christopher Lloyd) who insists on doling out library cards to every person who wanders in just to get out of the rain. Richard slips on some water and falls headfirst on the stone floor, rendering him unconscious.
Don't worry, this is the fun kind of concussion, the kind that causes you to have mysterious adventures through animated alternate realities. Richard suddenly finds himself in a cartoon world (he is even aware of the fact that he is now a drawing, which I found somehow strange). He is greeted by the Pagemaster (voice of Christopher Lloyd), who tells him about the jaw-droppingly generic journey he's about to embark on to reach the library exit.
Richard makes three new friends on his voyage, and they're all books: Adventure (voice of Patrick Stewart), Fantasy (voice of Whoopi Goldberg), and Horror (voice of Frank Welker). So there you have it—this is one of those inane kids' movies that tries to teach you the joy of childhood literacy by dramatizing bland, uninspired interpretations of Victorian literature.
Our animated heroes venture into the secret laboratory of Dr. Jekyll (Leonard Nimoy), who immediately transforms himself into Mr. Hyde. Fleeing Mr. Hyde's obligatory wrath, they cast off to sea, where they almost instantly come face-to-face with Moby-Dick and the crew pursuing him. Moments later, they wash ashore on a desert island, and—
I'm going to stop here and just list the remaining literary works that are referenced: Treasure Island, Gulliver's Travels, some generic dragon story, Jack and the Beanstalk.
Richard then reaches the exit, is congratulated for his bravery by the Pagemaster, and returns to the real world, where he has gained the courage necessary to ride his bicycle over dangerous ramps in inclement weather and sleep in a ramshackle treehouse. End of movie.
The Pagemaster was in production for three years (which, incidentally, explains why Macaulay looks so much younger here than in Richie Rich). Why did they bother? The DVD even includes a behind the scenes "making of" featurette, hosted by Christopher Lloyd. You can tell he doesn't believe a word he's saying about what a magical experience the movie is.
I remember this kind of drivel being everywhere when I was a kid. We were constantly being told how books can take you to faraway places and how your imagination is your ticket to a new reality. But kids aren't stupid, and they know the difference between books and hallucinogenic drugs. Hearing adults say things like that is just embarrassing.
And what's worst about it is that a lot of these books really are capable of entertaining kids. Treasure Island can be filmed in a way that children will love, as the Muppets proved. But it takes more than just a half-assed 45-second sequence depicting one or two of the characters. The literary vignettes in this movie have all the dramatic sophistication of a Sunny D commercial.
That might not matter if the movie itself had any semblance of a story. But nothing happens in it. Once you take out the homages to public domain classics, all that's left is a story about a nervous child who suffers a head injury.
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