The Phantom Tollbooth

I never read Norton Juster's book, but I heard about it and its film adaptation throughout childhood and beyond.  Never played on TV, though.  I would've eaten 1970's THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH up in those days.  I was fifty years old when I finally caught it, and frustrated that I didn't have more years toappreciate its endless cleverness and ingenious plotting.  I really have to read that book, now.

Despite those praises, THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH is not quite a kiddie classic.  All the makings were there, and there are numerous great moments.  But a palpable sluggishness weighs down the picture.  The screenplay by animator Chuck Jones and Sam Rosen is filled with more imagination than dozens of other films aimed at children from its era, but gets a little too self satisfied with its message(s).  Almost downright preachy.  Kids don't want to be preached to.  They want a starting point to muse on the finer points.  Maybe the filmmakers thought they would miss them?

Milo (Butch Patrick, best known as Eddie on The Munsters) is a boy who is bored with his life.  Even in late '60s San Francisco.  He doesn't understand why he should care about English and Math, or anything else.  No spark in it, so he thinks.  But one afternoon a mysterious tollbooth appears in his bedroom.  Actually a magical portal through which Milo will pilot a toy car into a cartoon universe.  He becomes animated, too, and travels through a troubled kingdom filled with disorganization and indecision.  The main conflict is between Dictionopolis and Digitopolis, ruled by kings who respectively favor words over numbers and vice versa.  There are overzealous traffic cops, "watch dogs",  demons, giants, and a guy who conducts sunset and sundown like the Author of the Universe conducting the creation of Earth (maybe my favorite section of the movie). 

I also enjoyed the "doldrums" sequence, complete with an appropriately melancholy song (did I mention that THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH is a musical?).  It seems like a swipe at the psychedelia/drug culture of the day, cautionary perhaps.  

Jones' animation is quite appealing and some of the backgrounds and details are amazing.  It's another film in which you can ignore the plot and get lost in the scenery, though the dialogue is often very lively and requires attention.  The wordplay is erudite and may have been lost on many viewers (including adults).  But it's an idea worthy of maybe forty-five minutes to an hour.  At feature film length, THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH, directed by Jones, Abe Levitow, and Dave Monahan, is didactic and even tiring.  But well worth seeing at least once.