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 ****
Review of The Phantom Tollbooth
