Sparki Fruit snacks have all the fun and yumminess and prettiness of candy, but are a little more beneficial due to being made with real fruit. Same thing with this movie. A fun-filled, colorful, whimsical fantasy, with some educational benefits mixed in with the fun.The animation is beautiful, with bright candy colors and fun zingy patterns. Viewers feel that they are accompanying bored tween Milo on his adventure, and the music is awesome, especially the Bacharach-esque opening and closing theme sung by a band reminiscent of the 5th Dimension, the Cowsills, Spanky and Our Gang, and the Free Design combined.I put this in the pantheon of great contemporary fantasy films, right up there with The Point, The Neverending Story, and Labyrinth

jonathan-577 This rendering of Norton Juster's one-of-a-kind celebration of words and ideas is honorable and absolutely gorgeous - the Grinchy anachronism of the Jones style (not to mention the 50s Kodachrome anachronism of the live-action framing scenes) renders the cascading psychedelic backgrounds even more impressive for their added displacement value. And the morals are as useful as morals get. But I don't think Jones was made for morals, not on this evidence: in the big climax a monster labelled 'hate' is felled by an arrow labelled 'truth' and it has all the kinetic power of a mediocre editorial cartoon. Nor does he seem to have a grip on feature-length structure - it meanders. And since "Chuck Amuck" was fresh in my mind, I thought back to the parable of the cat and the half-grapefruit: "character is difference." There are no sharp edges to Butch Patrick's generic Everykid, nor even to the dog Tock, who is half sitcom dad; there's too much plot-chat, not enough mayhem. And is that the Billy Vaughan Chorale furnishing the insipid, forgettable songs? Nonetheless, it's cute enough and dazzling enough to be forgiven for its shortcomings.

moonspinner55 A youngster from San Francisco, bored with school and with time to kill, is offered an educational round-trip from a Phantom Tollbooth; he turns animated and takes a journey to the Castle in the Sky, where Rhyme and Reason have been banished by Dictionopolis and Digitopolis, the feuding worlds of words and numbers who each believe they are most important. Uneven animated feature (with live-action prologue and epilogue featuring Butch Patrick) is an erratic but interesting adaptation of Norton Juster's book, punctuated with musical interludes (and some odd "Wizard of Oz"-isms). Veteran animator Chuck Jones co-wrote the script and co-directed the animated sequences (the first and final cartoon effort from MGM). Jones makes a mistake getting our young hero stuck in the Doldrums in the first act (there's no fascination in lethargy), but he picks up the pace soon after. Digitopolis has a nifty look (and lively Hans Conried as the MathemaGician), and there's a lovely "conducted" sunset and an exciting race to the castle. The animation is alternately crude, clumsy, expressive, colorful, and routine, and the songs are an equally mixed lot (they're pleasant, if not especially catchy). Patrick has a marvelous deep voice for a little kid, but he isn't given anything clever to say; better are Conried, June Foray and Mel Blanc in the voice-over department. Not too popular with child audiences at the time, this may have been a bit high-brow for the matinée crowds. If anything, the film has improved with age, and some of it is quite imaginative. **1/2 from ****

battlebeast The Phantom Tollbooth is warped movie from the warped mind of the great Chuck Jones.Milo, an ordinary boy, is bored with life. One day he receives a tollbooth as a present. This Tollbooth will supposedly take him out of his boredom.Milo enters the Tollbooth and is instantly changed into a cartoon character. From here on in, he journeys to the "Whether" man, into the doldrums, meets tock, the watchdog, and onward to Dictionopolis and the Kingdom of Numbers in order to save Rhyme and Reason.The movie is twisted in every which way; there are plenty of songs the make no sense but make you laugh out loud. The Animation is typical "Looney Tunes" style but works very well with the quirky plot.The Phantom Tollbooth is a lost gem the deserves DVD treatment in the worst way. Lets hope one day soon that this diamond in the rough will find a new generation of children!