Truly Dreadful Film

A very feeble attempt at affirmatie action

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

Macaulay Culkin plays a young and frightened boy in part-animation part-live-action story piece that quite frankly seems to be looking for a lost identity. But unlike in Home Alone, this little frightened boy doesn't have the engineering skills of a young Tony Stark to fall back on. But that is all about to change as he enters a place that will surely test his mettle. The Library!From there we get... You know, I'm not quite sure. A creepy stalker man of a librarian grabs him as soon as he enters, uses his dark powers to turn the boy into 2D-animation and sends him looking for a way out. On his way the boy meets Patrick Stewart, Whoopi Goldberg and Leonard Nimoy of all people. Oh sure, their characters have names, but they're such shallow stereotypes that it's easier to call them by their real names. Oh, and there's also all kinds of literary characters opposing their path. Mr. Hyde, Hound of Baskerville, Long John Silver, to name a few, but oddly enough, no one from the fantasy section. What, you couldn't find anyone not copyrighted? Why not call it the fairytale section instead and use pretty much any evil witch ever invented, or something?And I get what they were trying to do here. It's a romp through classics of literature. It's supposed to arouse interest in these side characters and get kids to read about them. A fair goal, but the problem is that they're not interesting here. That's partly because they're hardly on the screen before we have to move on, and partly because we see nothing but villains. And sure, villains are cool, but here they're merely there to act as obstacles and mean jerks that try to murder the heroes we're supposed to be rooting for. I don't want to read about them, I want them to go away.The film is also technically unsound. It doesn't follow a three act structure, is always in a rush and doesn't allow enough time for characters to grow. Sure there's some development, but often it comes straight out of nowhere with no way to see how we got there. The boy's character arc is the most whole, but even that is merely decent.Still, the voice actors are talented - despite being distracting - the quality of animation is surprisingly high and Christopher Lloyd is always a plus. Not something I'd recommend, but if a kid wanted to see it, I wouldn't say no.

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.

I only review the movies I really adore, some will slip that I don't adore but this one isn't one of them, it seems that over the years people have lost a lot of imagination, it seems as we go through the future we realize what cannot be true is so phony, but as I see it people will return to it one time, I am still a really liker of imagination, but people today don't wanna believe the things that no one can believe, so because of that this movie haven't got a lot of good reviews, I want to do this movie justice...The pagemaster is made for kids and adults who still dreams, it isn't the most serious movie at all but it does have some spots that has deemed it serious, mostly it is a movie that should be taken lightly.This movie wants us to be taught something like many others of its nature, in this movie we are taught two major things first 1. to take choices and not be afraid, to do things we normally would be a afraid of as a child, second 2. it teaches us the main thing, to believe, simply just to believe, we all know none of this is real but why do we have to disband these movies, they are imagination, fantasy something many today could need a whole lot more of.This movie is also done very good by the actors, they chose the right actors for every voice in the movie, but my favorite is of course Christopher Loyd as the Pagemaster, the one who granted a single wish for a kid who were afraid of everything.The music is perfect in this movie, as it is a fantasy music like this is needed, this is something people and companies have at least kept forever and haven't still forgot, now if only they would do the same for fantasy, for imagination, we all have a child in us, why grow up so fast, we get to be mature but that doesn't mean we have to let go the things that made us into what we are today, many of these movies have been forgotten but they will always stay inside us, so now it is time to say that this movie is all that it is a classic, a classic people just forgot.As I said above I only do reviews of movies I like, not movies I don't like so of course this is one of my favorite, I grew up watching movies like this, enjoy it, and for do yourself a favor and watch it again, slowly fall inside imagination, just one more time, it is worth it..."Shh I have a talent for guessing what people need"

First of all, I'd like to point out that I saw this movie just by "accident". I mean, it was only by occasion that I had a chance to watch it and, even though I had not the foggiest idea of what was the movie about, I decided to watch it because I was in the mood of seeing something different. I knew this was an animated movie, but I didn't know it was a combination of live-action and animation. That was a big surprise when I started watching the movie. But even before that I was surprised when I looked at the opening credits because there was a list of famous actors, such as the legendary and unforgettable Macaulay Culkin, Cristopher Lloyd, Whoopi Goldberg and Patrick Stewart. I was delighted because it stars the great Macaulay Culkin.The story introduces Richard Tyler (portrayed by Macaulay Culkin), an intellectual boy obsessed and concerned about statistics of nearly everything. He lives with his parents but seems to be a lonely boy with practically no friends. That and his obsession for statistics worries his parents. When he goes to a library, he meets an eccentric librarian, Mr. Dewey (played by Cristopher Lloyd), who believes Richard is desperate for a book about a fantasy world with adventure, danger, darkness, dragons and so on. After that, Richard sees a spectacular roof painted with strange characters and fantastic creatures. Then he accidentally slips on some water and falls down unconscious. What's next? Well, Richard and everything around him is transformed into illustrations. Richard lives great dangers and adventures in a world of fantasy and horror, including being swallowed by a enormous fire-breathing dragon.The movie starts very well and (I've gotta admit this) it has some spectacular and very creative special effects in the library. Next, the movie becomes animated, but not for good. While the animation is good, I can't say the same about the rest. The designs/drawings, sceneries, picture quality and artwork in general are nothing but dreadful. That fantasy world is a horrible place. The animated characters themselves are, most of them, very ugly. The illustrated Richard looks good and similar to Macaulay Culkin and the giant dragon looks absolutely amazing, but the rest of the characters are too much and annoying, especially those animated books: Adventure (a pirate-like book), Fantasy (a fairy-tale shaped book) and Horror (a horrific-looking book). Through great part of the movie, I found similarities and common elements to other movies and stories. Where do I begin? The tree-house idea comes from "Home Alone". The fact that Macaulay Culkin wears glasses here is a similarity to his character from "My Girl". A treasure island and the one-legged pirate Long John Silver comes directly from "Treasure Island". There are also elements from "Peter Pan" and "Moby Dick". But that's not all: common elements with "Jack and the Beanstalk", "Harry Potter", "The Lord of the Rings", "The Black Cauldron", "Sleeping Beauty", "Ghost Busters" and even with Asian anime cartoons are another reality. Some similarities with "The NeverEnding Story" can be found either. In the fantasy world, Richard is sent to a quest to face his fears. Another good example is the fact that he goes to a library (in this case, in the live-action world) and meets an eccentric librarian who tells him about strange and fantastic stories. Another similarity is that Richard gets angry in the end, for all they made him been through.Back to real life and the live-action world, Richard is still unconscious but when he wakes up, he seems to become a stronger boy and more ready to face life's problems.A good movie? Definitely not for me. Like I said, it starts very well and promising, but turns out to be a major disappointment when it becomes animated. Its combination of so many stories doesn't work well and its artwork is really terrible. The movie is also extremely dark, like "The Black Cauldron" and "The Lord of the Rings", for example, which doesn't help either. Overall, a good movie for kids, but for adults I'm not so sure. It all depends on each person's tastes.At least Macaulay Culkin deserves credit for his performance. He might have messed up his life later, but he always proved to be an excellent actor. This was one of his last movies and may have been an attempt to do something different, but turned out to be unsuccessful.