The Pagemaster (1994)

IMDb plot summary: A cowardly boy, who buries himself in accident statistics, enters a library to escape a storm, only to be transformed into an animated illustration by the Pagemaster. He has to work through obstacles from classic books to return to real-life.

Directed by Pixote Hunt and Joe Johnston. Stars Macaulay Culkin, Christopher Lloyd, and Kanin Howell.

The Pagemaster stars Macaulay Culkin as a young child who is afraid of everything, but when taking shelter in the library during the storm, he is abruptly drawn into the world of books (portrayed by a shift from live-action to animation) and must find his way out with the help of several genre looks. He encounters various literary characters such as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Long John Silver as he makes his way back home. This is cute. This is for kids. I'm all for stories that take literary concepts and characters and stories and condense them down so that kids can have a solid understanding of them. The plot itself doesn't really matter as much as the fun of coming across the different characters and having to interact with them. The book characters that Culkin journeys with are extremely broadly written tropes but they function fine as children's storybook sidekicks. I might have been way more into this as a kid, as someone who loved reading all these classics and would have enjoyed seeing them on screen all condensed together in the same world, but it doesn't offer a lot of new and exciting things for me as an adult. That's okay. It's not for me. I watched it too late. 

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 The Pagemaster (1994)

📊 Ranked #3292/4041 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 18

lost to Short Circuit (#2016 → #2012)

lost to The Accidental Tourist (#3024 → #2977)

beat Mr. & Mrs. Smith (held at #3533)

lost to A Stranger Among Us (#3280 → #3275)

beat Move Over, Darling (#3406 → #3477)

beat Asterix and Cleopatra (#3343 → #3347)

lost to Good Night, and Good Luck. (#3311 → #3288)

beat Carousel (#3327 → #3330)

beat Billy the Kid (#3319 → #3324)

beat Pepito y la lámpara maravillosa (#3315 → #3318)

beat Susannah of the Mounties (#3313 → #3316)

beat Bright Lights (#3312 → #3313)