The Phantom Tollbooth (1970)

The Phantom Tollbooth (Chuck Jones, Abe Levitow, Dave Monahan, 1970) When Warner Brothers' "Termite Terrace" was closed in 1962, animator Chuck Jones moved over to M-G-M where he started a new series of "Tom and Jerry" cartoons, won an Oscar for his short The Dot and the Line: a Romance in Lower Mathematics, and worked on such projects as The Bear That Wasn't, "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!", "The Pogo Special Birthday Special" and "Horton Hears a Who!"

 

But before M-G-M closed its animation division in 1970, Jones produced this adaptation of Norman Juster's 1961 children's classic (with illustrations by Jules Feiffer) that sold more than three million copies—Juster had also written "The Dot and the Line". Jones worked on the film in 1968, completing it by the end of the year. But, this was the time when M-G-M was in a slow-motion battle against corporate raiders and were taken over by Kirk Kerkorian and his appointed studio head James T. Aubrey. The result was a priority on real estate, the creation of the line of M-G-M Grand casino's, and a stranglehold on making movies. The Phantom Tollbooth was grudgingly released in 1970. 

The Phantom Tollbooth tells the story of Milo (Butch Patrick), bored San Francisco youngster, who is at that point in life where, if video-games existed, he'd be sitting in his room all day exercising his thumbs and wasting his life (or game-lives) in pursuit of short-term goals that get you nothing but transitory ego-boosts and dopamine hits. But, Milo gets a present—a big candy-striped box—that, when it's unwrapped contains a toll-booth, red car and a map to the Kingdom of Wisdom in the Lands Beyond.

As imagined by Jones' favorite background artist Maurice Noble, the Kingdom of Wisdom is an especially colorful animated world with its own rules, imaginary characters, and logic-sense. For Milo, it's a test for what sort of person he's going to become, and like The Wizard of Oz, it's a scavenger hunt of exploration, picking up helpers in order to achieve the ultimate goal. But unlike Dorothy, Milo isn't trying to find home. He's trying to find himself. In that way, it's more like Rebel Without a Cause.

First clue: he's stopped by a character named Officer Short Shrift (voiced by the ubiquitous Mel Blanc, who's actually ubiquitous in this one movie!) who gives him a ticket that says "I Am" and that's it. Getting a citation without any more clarification than that seems a rather pointless infraction. But, it just points to the fact that Milo doesn't know what he is, yet, except for a blank slate. It is the goal to sign that ticket, and, having done so, having a clue to what you are. A character named The Whether Man (Daws Butler), who can't make up his mind, is no help at all, creating more questions than answers.

But, there are bumps in the animated road. Early on, Milo is trapped in The Doldrums, beset by Lethargians, who are only to happy to leave him in a slothful slump of a swamp, from which he is rescued by Tock (Larry Thor), a "watch"-dog, who has a ticking clock for a stomach, and who is there to make Milo realize he's burning daylight and get him unstuck—dogs are good for that (imagine if it was a cat! Or a computer!). Once unsullied, Tock and Milo find the primary conundrum—a war that has occurred between the cities of Dictionopolis (concerned with all things letters) and Digitopolis (where numbers rule).

At one time, the cities were ruled by King Wisdom and his daughters, but since his death, the two cities have fallen into discord under their respective rulers, King Azaz, the Unabridged (voiced by Hans Conried), the man of great letters of Dictionopolis, and the Mathemagician (voiced by Hans Conreid), no. 1 of Digitopolis. As a result the princesses, Rhyme (voiced by Patti Gilbert) and Reason (voiced by June Foray) have been banished to the Castle-in-the-Air, guarded over by creatures from the Mountain of Ignorance.

The band, which now include The Humbug (voiced by Les Tremayne) and The Spelling Bee (voiced by Shepard Menken), try to return Rhyme and Reason to the Kingdom of Wisdom and along the way meet such creatures as the Demon of Insincerity, the Senses Taker, the Terrible Trivium, Faintly Macabre the Not-So-Wicked Which, and two noisy folks called the Awful Dynn and Kakofonous A. Dischord, who try to stop the freeing powers of Chroma the Great. One wonders why there isn't anybody named the Overarching Metaphor?

Being a punster myself, I tend to like things like this, which bring about colorful characters that delight a child and then around about when puberty wears off and a thought pops into your head, you realize that there might have actually been a lesson in there pin-balling inside your subconscious...just waiting to set off a light-bulb. And, being Jones' first feature, the animation, though threadbare (given the budget), stays consistently imaginative throughout and is helped immeasurably by Maurice Noble's imaginative, trippy backgrounds.

The songs, however, are a bit "meh!" and make you want to hit the fast-forward button, or at least, hit the head until they blow over. They're hold-overs from the treacly "Summer of Love" era, where the orchestrations are brassy, thumped with heavy tambourines, and in need of The Partridge Family. But, they don't last long. And every once in awhile something comes along where you admire the intricacy of the thing and the beauty of the art. Author Juster was not a fan, so one wonders if one can't hit two birds with one stone and just read the book, as it's been around for at least 50 years, and has aged very well, and never fallen out of fashion, or catered to trends, and, with the benefit of imagination, has an unlimited budget.