The Phantom Tollbooth (1970)

How sad is this?

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

The acting in this movie is really good.

I remember this film I was always fondly attached to, mainly because its just such an enjoyable little film. It encompasses that nostalgic feel of animations together with a lovely and quite innocent little story. When I was younger, I didn't exactly pay much attention to the plot, but the idea of being able to get into a car that builds itself in your room and somehow become animated was just exhilarating to my young imagination and it probably will be to other children of that age.The film begins with Milo, a young boy with way too much time on his hands. Spending another bored afternoon in his apartment, he comes across a strange present in his living room. Opening it up, a tollbooth and car magically form. On the tollbooth, a megaphone gives Milo instructions to get in the car and enter the tollbooth, taking him into another world of mad fun. This world has every strange creature that was ever conceived going around at once. It has the sludge like dull-drums which feed off the exhaustion of those who are unfortunate to travel within their swamp like surroundings and a Police Officer on one wheel who enjoys branding people Guilty until proved innocent on some of the most moronic charges. After a while, he comes across Tock the Dog, a Guard Dog with an Alarm Clock ticking inside him. Together, he and Milo travel to the Kingdom of Words where they meet the Humbug (a sarcastic charlatan who is rather simple minded) and the King of Words, who is in a feud with his brother, the King of Maths after the pair disagreed on whether Maths or Words were more important. Soon Milo finds himself on a quest with Tock and the Humbug to find the Princesses locked in the Castle in the Air, who hope to restore order and peace to the world. After stopping off at the King of Maths, the trio are now armed with the tools needed to face the various ghouls and demons that await them on their journey ahead. Can Milo and his friends make it to the Castle? Can they successfully defeat the dangerous monsters that await them? Only the movie can tell you...

This is why we have cable. Our sons (now 25 and 27) discovered this on a "family" cable channel over 20 years ago, and loved it. Their sister arrived a few years later and did, as well. For parents, the familiar San Francisco scenery, late 60s childhood fashions and impressively clever lyrics made the few slow scenes bearable. For the kids, it was all a joy. The aforementioned sons even dressed as Tok, the "watch"dog, once in a while (footie jammies + toy clock...). We videotaped it and watched often, until the tape broke! Now planning to buy, as we miss it so. The Doldrums might be my favorite, and even now I tell my students how impossible and very, very wrong it is to be bored. The Castle in the Air, the feud between Words and Numbers, all are a perfect manner for children to begin CRITICAL THINKING. Of course the book is a treasure and not to be missed however as another review mentioned we prefer the strong Milo in the film... and his theme song still brings me to tears with nostalgia. Next we buy this and introduce this to the girlfriends...

I am a big fan of Chuck Jones, and I had heard of "The Phantom Tollbooth" in various contexts as an animated feature, so when I saw it on the cable schedule, I made sure to reserve the time to watch it. Hmmmm. I decided that this wasn't bad for an first foray into feature length territory, and that if Jones had a chance to learn from his mistakes and try a couple more times, he would have probably come up with a real classic. But "Phantom Tollbooth" wasn't it, and deserves its place in semi-obscurity. Problem: Too much heavy handed moralizing. I was surprised that people as sneakily funny and subversive as Jones and his crew would be satisfied with the "tone" of the dialog and the exposition here. No matter that the target audience was young; Even Disney in the early years was never this blunt and cheesy in their subtexts and allegories. (From what I've read, the original text wasn't this unsubtle either. Or else what works in a 20 word blurb on the page doesn't always work at length in a live medium). More problems: About half of the songs are, um, pretty lame, at least to my sensibilities. The ones that yammer away about the virtues of earnestness, duty, hard work, etc. And Butch Patrick was a pretty good kid actor, but he was no singer - all he ever does is pipe along with the lyrics as if they were the musical version of The Pledge Of Allegiance. Worse yet, some of the animation is 2nd rate. Oh, sure, the main characters - the Watch Dog, the Humbug, Milo, the Mathemagician - are done as well as you expect from a Jones flick, and some of the backgrounds are suitably trippy, but most of the monsters and supporting cast (including Rhyme and Reason) are slapdash and badly conceived and look like another crew of 2nd unit apprentices did them. Still, the movie has its moments. The scene in the Doldrums had a nice sinister edge to it. It was nice to hear Blanc and Foray and Tremayne and the rest do what they do so well, even if they had trouble selling some of the dialog. And I am sure that the kid I was back in 1970 would have enjoyed more than I do now - although not as much as One Hundred and One Dalmations, or "The Sword In The Stone". I really wanted to like this movie as much as I do those two (which sport a similar style of character animation) and I want to overlook its faults, because it has a good heart. But as I said, it is undercooked enough that it really doesn't match up to the classics from that era.

1)The animation is bad, especially by Chuck Jones' standards. If you've seen any amount of his work with Bugs Bunny or Tom & Jerry then you will see why. Things suddenly have or change color, some things skip a few frames of animation, and at some points it looks like a 2nd grade class animated it with markers.2)There is no story, or at least none that I could find. It's basically one long experimental movie mixing live action with animation. There are very little live action scenes in the beginning to establish anything such as - where are Milo's parents? The kid doesn't live by himself does he? It's as if Chuck wanted to get to the animation as fast as possible.3) When we get to this animated world, it's very mundane and not very imaginative, ESPECIALLY the opening scenes involving the doldrums.Do we really need to see the main character yawning while other snot-like creates yawn too? This is movie-making rule #1: Don't have too much yawning in your movie or else the audience will be yawning right along with it! The part with the doldrums was torture.3) It's hard to make out a lot of the dialogue because of the sound effects and what they tried to do with the voices.It looks like crap and sounds like crap.I take it that this was supposed to be a sort of Alice in Wonderland experience, but it's not very fun or imaginative. I mean the police officer with one long leg that's a wheel(?) should tell you how lacking this movie is.When I saw this on TCM the other day Robert Osbourne said that this was made in 1968 but released in 1970, mostly due to MGM having a constant change of guard and because they didn't know how to sell this movie. I believe it! No one beyond the age of 1 should watch this.Actually, I can't imagine audiences going to see this in a movie theater. I barely was able to pay attention at home- and I didn't for a long stretch, deciding to do something else while it was on.Something more fun.