Dorathen Better Late Then Never

MusicChat It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

Griff Lees Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

jackcwelch23 This was my favourite film as a kid. Being born the year it came out, I think i spent the majority of 1998 watching it as that is when my brain developed enough to remember a movie. I honestly remember sitting there in my lounge room literally wishing there would be a sequel or a longer version somewhere out there because even as a toddler there were still parts of the film frustrated the hell out of me. I wanted to see Richard at school, get better sense of his lack of friends and worried, overly cautious nature. I wanted him to have a girl he liked, or someone he wanted to impress, that he could after his adventures with the books. I wanted more Christopher Lloyd. I wanted the areas of the journey he embarked upon to go longer than about 15 minutes each, I wanted more jokes and maybe a few more characters for them to meet along the way. I also would have liked more books to pop up, maybe like action or something like that. Even just a little cameo would have been cool.All that being said, what I was left with, I loved. More than anything. James Horner's score is easily my favourite of all time and summarises my awesome childhood. Macaulay Culkin was always my hero. I was delighted he was the star of this. It was a hell of a lot better than richie rich. Yeesh. The visuals were terrific and it really did have a sense of wonder. The very short runtime however, stopped it from being a real classic. Man oh man that was a small tragedy as a kid. It filled me with a rich sadness, because I didn't want the story to end. It did make me feel as hard as i think i ever felt as a child though, and for that, I cant fault it. Plus the bike scene made me want to jump 10 feet in the air with happiness.

powermandan As a 90s baby, I grew up watching this. The Pagemaster and a whole slew of other fun kiddie movies were the bomb. Now that I am an adult with a vast knowledge of movies, I have come to the conclusion that lots of the cool things I grew up watching really weren't that good. Compared to nowadays things, the stuff I grew up with are all epic masterpieces. When not compared and when not tying into any bit of nostalgia, I can understand why movies like The Pagemaster was not very well received.In one of Culkin's most underrated roles, he plays a total geeks who is afraid of everything. Nothing wrong with that. His parents are worried about him and will do anything to make him grow out of his shell. Nothing wrong with that. His dad (Ed Begley Jr.) sends him to a hardware store to buy nails. He wants his son to go alone to get some guts. Nothing wrong with that (I found). He takes his bike where he encounters a group of school bullies doing bike tricks on unfinished road construction with no workers around. Red light! How unrealistic is that!? He decides to take another route which lands him in the middle of a rain storm. I highly doubt a smart kid in the suburbs would not know another way. He goes into a library for shelter and meets a freaky librarian (Christopher Lloyd). This is where the problems subside. One thing leads to another and finds himself a cartoon with real life literary characters and book genres. He gets himself with Fantasy, Horror, and Adventure involved in different classic novel scenarios such as Moby Dick. Most of the movie is Culkin as a cartoon and the animation is good. The movie is supposed to make books seem like a ton of fun and it succeeds and turn a wuss into a daredevil (slight exaggeration). I was just very under-welmed with how everything was undertaken. The movie is 75 in length, but it feels like a lot longer. There were set-ups and aftermaths of each of his tasks like there should be, but they are all just weak. Wendy Moten composes a tremendous tune called "Whatever You Imagine" that I love and that plays a few times in this, but does not do much to help. I love everything that came out between 1990 and 2000. The fashion, music and movies are all near and dear to my heart. I don't care that The Pagemaster was not what I remembered because it takes me back anyway to a better time in my life.I may not always like this. This is so dull and droned for a 75 minute film. The only good bits are the live-action parts.

rorymacveigh The whole makeup of this film is an absolute bore-fest, you might as well sleep through the whole lot because it would be no different if you put the effort in to watch this film. I mean it's meant to be adventurous and epic, but the way it goes about it is enough to make you cringe. On top of that, it features many different characters of famous literature including Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Captain Ahab, The Tiny People of Gullivers Travels and Long John Silver, but the problem with all these cameo's is, it doesn't explain who these people are or why they're famous. They just appear and disappear without a word to the audience of who these people are or what they're known for. Worse still, it features the uselessly bland expression that is McCauley Caulkin, who was the eldest in a line of three brothers who continue to keep up the family tradition of blank emotionless faces and acting that makes you want to cry or question whether or not you have a soul left.The film begins with Richard Tyler, a young nervous bookworm of a boy who lives his life by statistics which means he hasn't the confidence to do fun things like most kids do without scrutinising them endlessly (if I had a child that bland I'd be very worried). Whilst building him a tree-house (which he most likely wont use), his father asks him to get some nails from the hardware store. Whilst on his way, Richard gets lost in a storm and finds his way to an old Library, where Christopher Lloyd is the strange Librarian who wants to enchant Richard into taking out some books from three categories, Horror, Adventure and Fantasy (treating them like they were the only three forms of book in existence, forget Sci-fi and Romantic Comedy, it's looks like there's only three in the world). But Richard only wants to use a phone. Whilst searching for the phone, he slips and falls, knocking himself out. When he comes to, the ceiling begins to drip on him and before long he is engulfed in a huge animated flood that transforms him into an illustration. He is soon confronted by the Pagemaster (a name that sounds dull to begin with, founder of the written word? More like founder of the most boring subject matter award!) He is soon sent off on a voyager (By way of supersonic library cart) and comes across his first booky friend, Adventure, a Scurvy Dog of a Book who wants Richard to check him out of the Library. It's not long before his second friend of the books arrives named Fantasy, a stuck up fairy like book. After escaping the Hounds of the Bascavilles, the trio becomes a quad as they bump into Horror, a simple minded book which is raggedy. Together, the group must find the Exit, but they must first face the various fictional monsters that lie ahead. Will Richard make it home? Will they ever find the Exit? Will Richard ever get his dad's nails? Set your alarm clock for 45 minutes time and you'll find out soon enough...Again, very boring subject matter which has no reference to any of the famous characters that are featured in the movie. There are only three categories of literature that are explored and there is no reference to any other category so for viewers who are not fully embalmed in the world of literacy, they'll only believe that these three categories exist. Big shocker when they bump into Sci-fi, Non-Fiction or Heavily Indulged Romance (I'm talking to you "50 Shades of Grey"). Granted the animation can be quite enjoyable and I really do see that a lot of effort was made into making this film, but if only their time and effort was put into something that wouldn't have viewers snoring away merrily within the first 5 minutes. Good for a watch on a wet Saturday afternoon, but other than that, a real turn off...

Elgroovio The main argument that I have against this film is that it seems to try, and subsequently fails, to be Disneyesque. As a result, it does not come across as an original or innovative idea. However, this is definitely not the only thing wrong with this disappointing feel-good extravaganza.First of all, there are some definite cast issues: Macaulay Culkin is quite unbearably irritating as the cowardly Richard Tyler, a role that, in my opinion, would have benefited a lot from a more comic portrayal that would have made the audience relate to him more easily. Another annoying feature is Whoopi Goldberg as Tyler's animated literary companion, Fantasy. She is the wise-cracking character that you find very often in animated feature films, like the Genie from "Aladdin" (portrayed engagingly by Robin Williams), except that Goldberg, for all her talent, does not really have the extreme pathos that Williams had, and that the role requires. Patrick Stewart, the man with one of the greatest voices to ever grace the big screen, is somewhat wasted as the obligatory coward-who-thinks-he's-so-brave, Adventure, and although Frank Welker's Horror (the hunchbook) is amiable, the character still comes across as boringly formulaic, like the film. The cast's only real saving grace is the live-action Christopher Lloyd as Mr Dewey the librarian, not to mention the latter's animated alter-ego, the Pagemaster. As he so often is, Lloyd is brilliantly over the top. Otherwise, the only other interesting vocal contribution is that of Leonard Nimoy as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, although his appearance is limited to a small cameo.Furthermore, the animation, for a modern day viewer, is not impressive enough to distract the audience from the dull plot, and neither is the dialogue, which falls flat (especially with Culkin's unenthusiastic delivery) and the gags are mostly grindingly facetious and unfunny ("Would you like to crawl into a corner with a good book?"). There is also a song in the middle of the film, "Whatever You Imagine", written by Barry Mann, James Horner and Cynthia Weil, and performed by Wendy Moten. The song seems to be an attempt at capturing the Disney feel of incorporating Pop songs into the story-line. However, whether you like Disney's songs or not, you have to admire their talent for incorporating them into the plot, as can be seen in "The Lion King" (a film of which I, personally, am not tremendously fond) with Elton John and Tim Rices' Oscar-winning "Can You Feel the Love Tonight", not to mention the other songs that they wrote for that film, all of which fit seamlessly into the plot. In "The Pagemaster", no such cohesion between plot and music is achieved even minimally.However, although this film is mostly disappointing, not all is lost. The story, for all its flaws, wastes no time in getting started, and there is a certain nostalgia surrounding the film for the endless stream of, mostly mediocre, but still harmless, cartoons of the 90s, when computer-generated animation was yet to be exploited. The film does make a respectable attempt at being educational on the literary world, but some of the references are too fleeting (more Sherlock Holmes would not have gone amiss) while others were given too much emphasis, especially the "Treasure Island" segment, although Long John Silver is quite endearingly modeled on Robert Newton's classic portrayal of the character from the 1950 motion picture. Pixote Hunt, Maurice Hunt and Joe Johnston handle the direction skillfully, and, had the script and the story been polished up, this film just might have been passable. Having said that, I can't deny that, when I first saw the film, as a young boy, around ten odd years ago, I was sufficiently entertained, so it is definitely a good, innocent film to plant your children in front of if it's on television, but definitely not worth buying.