The Pagemaster

A timid boy named Richard Tyler is ruled by fear and by the statistics he uses to avoid anything risky, including the treehouse his father is building for him. Caught in a storm while running an errand on his bicycle, he takes shelter in an old library, where a knock on the head sends him into a world made of books. To find his way home he must travel through realms drawn from classic stories, accompanied by three talking volumes named Adventure, Fantasy and Horror, and face the dangers he has spent his life avoiding.

Joe Johnston directed the live-action material, his third feature after Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and The Rocketeer and the one preceding Jumanji, while Pixote Hunt handled the animated portions in his first directing credit. Macaulay Culkin plays Richard, Christopher Lloyd appears as the librarian and voices the Pagemaster, and Patrick Stewart, Whoopi Goldberg, Frank Welker and Leonard Nimoy voice the books and literary figures. David Kirschner, Ernie Contreras and David Casci wrote the screenplay, and Kirschner produced with Michael R. Joyce and Paul Gertz.

Released in November 1994, the film cost about 27 million dollars and returned roughly 14 million worldwide. Audiences rate it moderately at 6.1 on IMDb from about 25,000 votes and 6.4 on TMDB from around 800 votes, while the critics' score stands lower at 4.3 from 21 reviews.