the pagemaster is the oddest film aimed at children i've ever seen . it makes a number of gigantic errors in judgment -- not the least of which is that it has the unsubtle subtext of reading as being a chore to be risen to . it's a depressing and blatantly manipulative movie at its heart , although it obviously wants to be anything but . the movie opens interestingly enough . macaulay culkin is featured as a kid who is paralyzed by fear of -- well , everything , from the look of it . he's memorized reams of accident statistics and keeps emergency provisions of all kinds in his room ( which gives rise to one of the movie's few genuine laughs ) . one day he blunders into a mysterious library , and after some mishaps , manages to get himself projected into various animated versions of several classic books . this is where the first of the errors in judgment come in : instead of trying to woo the audience with the subtexts or emotional content of those books ( " moby dick " and " dr . jekyll and mr . hyde " among them ) , they get turned into cheap arcade-game attacks on the senses . the movie is not interested in reading , or the stories , per se -- or even in the kid's plight , really . it's just an excuse to throw us into one animated headrush after another -- and , presumably , to unload pagemaster toys of one variety or another . even the animation doesn't hold up . shows like " south park " and " beavis and butthead " ( and their attendant spinoffs ) don't have disney-level animation , but they use smart writing and clever direction to more than make up for it . they are no more than they need to be . the pagemaster badly wants to be an eyeful of the disney variety , but looks dim and unclear , done in haste . how do movies like this get made ? the whole thing probably sounded like such a nice idea that nobody paid much attention to the way it was being embodied . didn't anyone stop and wonder , what an unrepentant piece of cynicism this is , trying to sell kids on books and reading through the same strategies as mindless action movies and electronic games ? i have nothing against video games -- just that books and video games are apples and oranges , and this movie should have known better than to blatantly confuse the two . i also resented the way the kid's emotional problems are used for a cheap payoff . at the end of the movie , he's basically learned to suck in his gut and take it all like a man . allegedly , the movie is propaganda in favor of kids picking up books , but after something like the pagemaster , they're more likely to feel insulted than inspired . the best way to get kids interested in books is to read to them , and let them pick up the habit naturally , instead of subjecting them to cynical concoctions like this . 
