The Pagemaster
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| The Pagemaster | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Pixote Hunt Joe Johnston (live action) Maurice Hunt (animation) |
| Produced by | David Kirschner |
| Written by | David Kirschner |
| Starring | Macaulay Culkin Christopher Lloyd Ed Begley, Jr. Mel Harris Patrick Stewart Whoopi Goldberg Frank Welker Leonard Nimoy George Hearn Phil Hartman |
| Music by | James Horner |
| Cinematography | Alexander Gruszynski |
| Editing by | Kaja Fehr |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
| Release date(s) | November 23, 1994 |
| Running time | 80 min. |
| Country |  |
| Language | English |
| Gross revenue | $13,670,688 |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
The Pagemaster, a live action/animated film released by 20th Century Fox on November 23, 1994 is based on an illustrative book of the same name by David Kirschner and Ernie Contreras. The entire film is illustrated by Jerry Tiritilli. It was directed by Joe Johnston (live action) and Maurice Hunt (animation).
Contents |
[edit] Plot
A pessimist Richard Tyler (Macaulay Culkin) runs his life based on statistics and fears practically everything. His parents are exasperated, his father Alan (Ed Begley Jr.) trying multiple ways to help him, but to little succession. Richard is sent by his father to buy a bag of nails so he can finish constructing a treehouse for him. However, Richard gets caught in a deadly thunderstorm and takes shelter in a library. Here, he is met by Mr. Dewey (Christopher Lloyd), the eccentric librarian who tries to guess the book he think Richard needs and gives him a library card. However, he is wrong and points the boy towards a payphone. Richard wanders off and finds a large rotunda painted with classic fictional characters. Richard slips on some water that dripped from his coat and falls unconscious. He awakens and finds the rotunda paintings melting, forming a wave of colour that transforms him and the library into illustrations.
Richard is approached by the Pagemaster (voiced by Lloyd) who sends him on a journey into the fiction section to find the way home by looking for the Exit sign. Along the way, Richard befriends three assistants to the Pagemaster who resemble books: Adventure, a swashbuckling pirate-like book (Patrick Stewart), Fantasy, a sassy but caring fairy tale book (Whoopi Goldberg), and Horror, a fearful "hunchbook" with a mishapened spine (Frank Welker). The three agree to help Richard find his way out if he checks them out using his library card. Together, the quarter encounter classic fictional characters. They meet Dr. Jekyll in a haunted house where he transforms into the monstrous Mr. Hyde, before heading out into open waters to the Land of Adventure. However, the group are separated by an attack by Moby Dick. Richard and Adventure are picked up by the crew of the Jolly Roger, captained by Long John Silver. The pirates go to Treasure Island, but find no treasure, nearly causing a mutiny between the captain and crew. Fantasy and Horror appear and defeat the pirates. Silver attempts to make Richard go with him, but he retreats when Richard threatens him with a sword. Adventure insults Horror, causing the hunchbook to get captured by little people from Gulliver's Travels. Adventure saves him and they make up.
The group travel through the fantasy section, Richard seeing the Exit sign on top of a mountain. However, a sleeping dragon is awakened and chases Richard and his friends. Richard fights off the dragon using a sword and shield, but he is eaten. Richard finds books in the dragon's stomach and uses a beanstalk to escape. The heroes arrive at the top and enter a large dark room where the Pagemaster awaits them. Richard angrily berates the Pagemaster and the horrors he has suffered at, but the Pagemaster reveals the journey was to task Richard so that he could face his fears. The characters Richard met beforehand reappear in a magical twister congratulating him. Richard then discovers he is still unconscious in the library, and his dream state is an illustration. He returns to his body and awakens. Mr. Dewey finds him and allows him to check out Adventure, Fantasy, and Horror, who have now become real books. Richard returns home a braver kid, sleeping in his new treehouse. Adventure, Fantasy, and Horror appear as silhouettes on a wall talking, Adventure kissing Horror unintentionally off-screen.
[edit] Cast
- Macaulay Culkin as Richard Tyler: A young American boy who seems to have a fear of everything and runs his life based on safety statistics. He is transformed into an illustration while exploring a library and must face his fears in an animated world.
- Christopher Lloyd as Mr. Dewey/The Pagemaster: The eccentric librarian and caretaker of a seemingly abandoned library. Dewey seems disappointed by children do not read books anymore and frightens Richard with his outbursts. Mr. Dewey's alternate form is the Pagemaster, Keeper of the Books and Guardian of the Written Word. The Pagemaster sends Richard on his journey into the fiction section to face his fears. Lloyd's facial structure and appearance was incorporated into the Pagemaster's.
- Ed Begley Jr. and Mel Harris as Alan and Claire Tyler: Richard's supportive parents. Alan considers himself a bad father due to his continuous attempts to help Richard drop his worries, but most have failed. He builds a treehouse in an attempt to help Richard conquer his fear of heights.
- Patrick Stewart as Adventure: A swashbuckling thriller book resembling a stereotypical pirate. He wears a fake eyepatch and has a large number of pirate-based weapons and items in his pages. He has an aggressive relationship with the other books, but learns to swallow his pride and be friends. He falls in love with Fantasy in the climax of the film. He is described by the director Joe Johnston as a representative of all previous thriller and adventure heroes known in fiction.
- Whoopi Goldberg as Fantasy: A fairy tale-styled book. She can be aggressive and hotheaded but is caring and sassy. She helps Richard on his journey, mishelved by accident. She has an uneasy relationship with Adventure, but they fall in love by the film's climax. Joe Johnston wanted a tough black woman as Fantasy rather than a white woman.
- Frank Welker as Horror: A third book who helps Richard. Despite his name, he is quite the opposite of horrific. He is misunderstood and is afraid a lot similar to Richard. However, he is very gentle and good-natured. He tries to befriend Adventure, who returns it with aggression, claiming Horror could never match up to him. Joe Johnston describes Horror as as a book with a mishapened spine, whose mother was an encyclopedia and his father was a paperback, which led to him being mishelved for life.
- Leonard Nimoy as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: The fictional scientist who can transform into a horrific monster. He terrorises Richard and the books in a haunted house.
- George Hearn as Captain Ahab: An almost psychotic whale hunter who is out to kill the giant whale, Moby Dick.
- Jim Cummings as Long John Silver: Captain of the Jolly Roger galleon. Long John Silver recruits Richard as the ship's cabinboy and respects Richard for standing up to him with a sword. He is missing a leg and uses a crutch for support.
- Phil Hartman as Tom Morgan: A pirate on the Jolly Roger, possibly first mate. He is rather violent pirate, threatening to chop apart Richard and eat Silver's parrot.
- Ed Gilbert as George Merry: An obese and ugly pirate on the Jolly Roger. He leads the mutiny against Long John Silver.
- B.J. Ward as The Queen of Hearts: The tyrannical ruler of Wonderland. Appears in a cameo to scare Richard while he searches for a book while trapped in a dragon's stomach.
- Dorian Harewood, Richard Erdman, Fernando Escandon and Robert Picardo as Pirates: Various pirates on the Jolly Roger. They cause a mutiny against their captain Long John Silver, but are all knocked out by nd Horror.
[edit] Production Notes
The Pagemaster took three years to develop. The crew consisted of some of the best animators during the early 1990s. Notable films worked on by the animators include The Land Before Time, Aladdin and An American Tail. This was one of the first films to feature live-action, animation and CGI all together. One scene involved a computer generated dragon made from paint was used, a challenge for the filmmakers. All of the fictional works featured in the film were created and first published before January 1, 1923, making them a part of the public domain in most countries. The theme songs to the movie are "Dream Away", sung by Babyface and Lisa Stansfield; the other being "Whatever You Imagine", sung by Wendy Moten.
The majority of the cast has appeared in some form or another on Star Trek. (Patrick Stewart played Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Whoopi Goldberg played Guinan, Leonard Nimoy played Mr. Spock, Robert Picardo played The Doctor, Christopher Lloyd played Kruge in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, Ed Begley Jr. played Henry Starling in two episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, George Hearn played Dr. Berel in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and B.J. Ward played numerous characters in Star Trek computer games as did Jim Cummings. Composer James Horner was also the composer for Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan and Star Trek III: The Search For Spock.)
Promotional advertisements for this film used the theme from the 1984 film The Last Starfighter.
[edit] Reception
The film grossed $13,670,688 in theaters. Despite the large amount of effort put into the film, including the cast of recognized actors, the film did not attract a large enough audience to make a large amount of money. Not much film merchandise was sold, only soft toys of the main characters, t-shirts, and a Game Boy, Sega Genesis, and SNES game of the same title. A behind-the-scenes documentary was produced to show how the film was produced, hosted by Christopher Lloyd playing his character of Mr. Dewey. The film was released on VHS worldwide, and has developed a notable fanbase since its release.
[edit] Literary Allusions
There are several smaller allusions to poems, books and rhymes in the movie in addition to the more obvious ones:
- Adventure intentionally opens Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne in order to release a giant squid.
- Above the doorway of Dr. Jekyll's mansion, a raven calls out "nevermore" and then flies off. Both the raven and the doorway are references to the poem "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe.
- Horror calls out "Sanctuary! Sanctuary!" as he is being dragged into a hole in the floor by Mr. Hyde. This is an allusion to Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame which is set in a time period when churches offered limited sanctuary from arrest.
- The small figures who tie down Horror on the beach are Lilliputians from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift.
- The magic carpet that appears when Fantasy uses the story of Arabian Nights to help escape from the dragon is from her 1001st page, a nod to The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (an alternate name for Arabian Nights).
- While inside the belly of the dragon, Richard opens Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, releasing the The Queen of Hearts who shouts "off with his head!".
- There are brief appearances by Mother Goose and Humpty Dumpty, two well-known nursery rhyme characters.
- Fantasy claims that she wears "Little Mermaid underwear," a reference to The Little Mermaid book by Hans Christian Andersen, or the Disney animated film.
- There are two references to The Wizard of Oz - once when Richard asks Fantasy if he has to "click his heels" in order to go home, and again when the characters are seen walking on a yellow brick road.
- There are also two references to "A Christmas Carol" - the first when Richard slides down the hallway and we hear some dialogue of the introduction to the Ghost of Christmas Past, and the other when Richard, Adventure and Fantasy walk in a graveyard and one of the graves says "Jacob Marley", and even has chains.
- Richard uses a copy of Jack and the Beanstalk to grow the giant beanstalk out of the dragon's mouth.
Various other books are seen on screen, though no explicit reference to either is ever made. These include The Shining by Stephen King, Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson, Mysterious Island and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.
