Star Trek's Leonard Nimoy Played Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde In This Forgotten '90s Flop

Joe Johnston's and Maurice Hunt's live-action/animated feature "The Pagemaster" is a strange beast indeed. It concerns the fate of an overly cautious and neurotic lad named Richard Tyler (Macaulay Culkin) who lives every moment of his life in utter fear. While on an errand for his father (Ed Begley, Jr.), he gets caught in a storm, and hides in a local library until it passes. In the library, he meets a semi-magical librarian (Christopher Lloyd), who touts the virtues of reading and who issues him his library card. 

Richard then slips, thwacks his head, and begins to dream (or is perhaps transported into) a realm where he is animated, and where books come to life. Quite literally. Anthropomorphic books with faces and legs begin walking up to him to introduce themselves, each one named after the literary genre they represent. There is the fairy Fantasy (Whoopi Goldberg), the Igor-like Horror (Frank Welker), and the pirate Adventure (Patrick Stewart). One might wonder what the characters of Psychological Realism, Socratic Dialogue, or Political Manifesto would be like. 

Richard is then thrown into the living worlds of various well-worn novels of the Western canon. He meets Long John Silver (Jim Cummings, one of the best voice actors of all time) from Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island." He meets the Queen of Hearts (B.J. Ward) from Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." He meets Captain Ahab (George Hearn) from Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick." 

And, when he first enters the literary world, he meets the seemingly friendly Dr. Jekyll (Leonard Nimoy) from Stevenson's "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." Naturally, Jekyll will immediately slurp down an eerie green cocktail and mutate into the monstrous Mr. Hyde. Between Goldberg, Stewart, Nimoy, and others, "The Pagemaster" is a mashup of several "Star Trek" actors. 

To remind readers, Leonard Nimoy played Spock on the original "Star Trek" series and in multiple movies. Patrick Stewart played Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Whoopi Goldberg played Guinan, both on "Star Trek: The Next Generation." Christopher Lloyd played a Klingon in "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock." Frank Welker, meanwhile, provided the screams for the young Spock in "Star Trek III," so he also counts as a "Trek" veteran. 

In a fun coincidence, Welker also played an alternate version of Nimoy's character in the 1986 animated film "Transformers: The Movie." Welker played Megatron (inspired by Barry White) and Nimoy played Galvatron, the upgraded version of Megatron. The two also appeared in the 2017 film "Transformers: Dark of the Moon." 

It should also be noted that prolific character actor Robert Picardo had a supporting role as a pirate in "The Pagemaster," and he would go on to play the holographic Doctor on "Star Trek: Voyager." This flick is a veritable "Star Trek" party. 

Clearly, the raison d'être of "The Pagemaster" is to encourage kids to read more, and gives them a few easy recommendations (although I can't imagine too many kids Macaulay Culkin's age who would be willing to tuck into the dense, symbol-rich tome that is "Moby-Dick"). It was produced by the late Ted Turner's animation studio, and Turner was very big on "message" entertainment with some kind of protracted social value; he was also behind the environmentalist superhero series "Captain Planet and the Planeteers." That Leonardo DiCaprio movie never manifested. 

As one can imagine, such a corny movie wasn't a hit. On a $34 million budget, "The Pagemaster" only made $13.7 million back. Critics hated it. No one seems to remember it fondly. 

Roger Ebert gave "The Pagemaster" one-and-a-half stars, noting how dreary it was, and how misguided its message; he felt it was condescending, telling kids that reading will provide the same experience as TV or video games. "Why is the gift of reading so often treated like a pill that needs to be sugarcoated?" he wrote. "Reading is the fun, not the treatment." He hated that the literary characters on screen were transformed into cartoonish, kid-friendly versions of themselves. 

"The Pagemaster" was a notorious production at the time. According to the film's TV Tropes page, Joe Johnston, who only directed the film's live-action sequences, complained about his scenes being re-edited without his permission. He henceforth rejected the film as one of his works. Johnston had previously directed a big hit for Disney in the form of "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" and a beloved bomb in the form of "The Rocketeer. He would have great success the year after "The Pagemaster" directing the picture book adaptation "Jumanji." His most recent gig was directing reshoots for the ultra-flop "The Nutcracker and the Four Realms" in 2018. 

And after all that, "The Pagemaster" was accused of plagiarising a story called "Critical Scrutiny." Nothing seems to have gone well for anyone on this movie. It's the kind of film that touts the greatness of certain books, when just putting books in kids' hands would be more rewarding for them. Instead of watching "The Pagemaster," go read "Treasure Island." More than anything, "The Pagemaster" is a curio for Trekkies who might want to see so many "Star Trek" actors in one place. But, again, one might do better to just watch "Star Trek" reruns.