Christy by Request — The Pagemaster

“The Pagemaster” is the kind of movie first-grade teachers would have popped into the VCR in the 1990s to kill time on a rainy afternoon. With its rudimentary animation and lame pop-culture puns, it’s simultaneously ghastly and inoffensive. It does what it aims to do for its (very young) target audience, but it’s a slog for anyone even slightly older.

I’d never heard of this 1994 family adventure, a mixture of live action and animation that’s a far cry from the technological wonder of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” six years earlier. When it popped up as this week’s random Christy by Request title — the suggestion of Dylan DeAngelis (@ThatNerdDylan_) in Aston, PA — I looked it up on Rotten Tomatoes and found it had earned a dismal 18 percent positive reviews. But! I have to watch whatever comes up, regardless of how painful it might be. That’s how this works.

“The Pagemaster” is indeed terrible, but it’s also harmless and it means well. It’s actually not worth trashing, especially retroactively, so we’ll make this quick.

Joe Johnston directed the live-action segments that serve as the film’s bookends; Maurice Hunt directed the animated portion, which makes up the majority of the movie’s meager running time. (Blessedly, it’s barely 75 minutes.) Macaulay Culkin — who, as a superstar four years after “Home Alone,” shouldn’t have needed to say yes to this kind of movie anymore — serves as our sweet, scared hero. He plays the bullied and bespectacled Richard, who’s terrified of everything, even the treehouse his father (Ed Begley Jr.) is building for him in the backyard.

“You can’t live your life based on statistics,” his dad tells him when he’s in the middle of rattling off more facts about accidents. “You’ve got to take some chances.”

Conveniently enough, Richard is forced to do exactly that when a storm hits while he’s riding his bike. Seeking shelter from the thunder and lightning (among the many things that frighten him), Richard runs into a library, where a goateed Christopher Lloyd is the wacky librarian. The boy slips on the slick, wet tile while admiring a garish, colorful mural in the library’s rotunda and bonks his head. Suddenly, the painting comes to life, the colors swirling and surrounding him, sucking him into an animated world. (My 8-year-old son, who sat down next to me on the couch for a second and ended up watching the whole movie, thought this part was pretty cool.)

From here, “The Pagemaster” is essentially a crudely animated version of “The Wizard of Oz.” (But at least it has the decency to acknowledge that with a joke about Richard clicking his heels to go home.) Books from various genres come to life — with a shockingly starry cast providing their voices — and befriend Richard, helping him along the way as he encounters obstacles and adversaries en route to his destination: the Exit.

A wise, wizard-like character known as The Pagemaster (also voiced by Lloyd) sets him on his path. Three talking books help guide and advise him along his journey: the swaggering and swashbuckling Adventure (Patrick Stewart), the sassy and sparkly Fantasy (Whoopi Goldberg) and the shaking and stammering Horror (voiceover veteran Frank Welker, who’s portrayed iconic characters ranging from Scooby-Doo to Megatron to Nibbler on “Futurama”). There is literally nothing more to these characters than their names would suggest.

As he searches for the Exit, Richard faces his fears one by one and accidentally gains confidence until he’s literally transformed himself into a knight in shining armor. The look of the film, however, isn’t nearly so assured. It resembles what I’d imagine a “Magic Tree House” movie would look like if the illustrations accompanying those books ever came to the big screen. There’s a lot of pirate lore, some dragons to slay, a visit with childhood literary characters like Humpty Dumpty. Leonard Nimoy provides the voices of both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It’s pretty simple stuff, but the rules governing this world are confusing and ever-changing (as are the characters’ colors). Can they open a book to a certain page to get themselves out of danger? Sort of. Sometimes.

Every once in a while, Richard shouts: “Look! There it is, the Exit!” And that’s encouraging, because it means the movie has to end soon. But before it does, it provides the adults stuck watching with exactly one amusing sight gag. Among Richard’s many interactions with classic pieces of literature, he has to lift a giant copy of “Atlas Shrugged” off his shoulders. (Kids love Ayn Rand!)

Right around then, I turned to Nicolas sitting next to me on the couch and asked: “What do you think so far?” He said: “Well … I actually kind of like it.” And he’s usually a tougher critic than I am.