I feel exactly the same way (This coming from a 21 year old man). This film takes a creative premise (a boy faces his fears by stepping into the worlds of literature's greatest classics), and tells it with imagination and magic (with all of it contained within a place where all stories are waiting to be told: The Library). The mixture of animation and live-action was a pitch-perfect idea, and the creative team has some of the best that could have been assembled for a project like this (with the standouts being director David Kirschner (with "Hocus Pocus", "An American Tail", and "Honey I Shrunk The Kids" being a few of his memorable projects he had worked on) and composer James Horner (who remains one of my favorite film composers to this day and co-wrote the moving ballad of the film "Whatever You Imagine" with his "American Tail" songwriters Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil). The casting was all around great (Macaulay Culkin playing the reluctant hero Richard Tyler (not playing against type considering his career thus far), Patrick Stewart, Whoopi Goldberg, and Frank Welker playing Adventure, Fantasy, and Horror respectively (bringing humor and likeablility to each of their roles without seeming the least bit annoying (which is sadly the case for most comedic sidekicks in other animated films) along with several notable guest roles (Christopher Lloyd as both the mysterious librarian Mr. Dewey and the wise Pagemaster, Jim Cummings as the perfect Long John Silver, and Leonard Nimoy playing both the calm Dr. Jekyll and the menacing Mr. Hyde). I could go on and on about how this film shaped my love of reading and has endured as a film that captured the essence of my childhood, but that would take forever. This film remains one of my utmost favorites, and it will be one that I will be glad to share with my children when the time comes. It is a triumph of imagination and a film that proves that all of life can be found within the pages of books and they are just waiting for you to bring them to life.
Last Film Seen:
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (10/10)
reply
share
novastar_6
13 years ago
I must've been 5 or maybe 6 when we first saw it and I thought it was very boring at that time. Through the years the only part I could remember was when Horror wanted the olive in Adventure's drink and the drink ate away at the floor. Finally a few months ago (I'm also 21 now, woman) I decided to see it again, the library didn't have it in so it was ordered in from another one. I saw it with my mother and she was not impressed with it...I agree it was a little slow in the beginning but it doesn't waste much time in jumping into the adventure. I loved it, it was very funny with Fantasy and Horror and Adventure arguing all the time, I loved Fantasy's like of 'how you gonna grab a person by the pantyhose like that? Now I've got to straighten out my Little Mermaid underwear!' It was a lot of fun, and I'm sorry I didn't like it as a kid because maybe then it would've gotten me interested in reading the stories they had in there, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Treasure Island, etc., but better late than never, right? One thing I didn't get was why had it been so long for Fantasy and Horror and Adventure since they were last checked out of the library? That makes it seem like there is an epidemic of Richard Tylers out there who haven't dived into the world of adventure and fantasy. And today that is certainly true, I think this movie would do VERY well if it were released today. But for 1994 I don't know what that was like. My one complaint with the movie was it was too short, it was barely an hour long and the box said an hour and 20 minutes.
reply
share