The Pagemaster

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.