The Phantom Tollbooth

1970 Chuck Jones cartoon

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Bored youngster Milo is tired of spending all his time moaning and groaning about having nothing to do. So he does what any youngster would do in the late-1960s--he experiments with hallucinogenic drugs. The hallucinations began almost immediately. A tollbooth, actually a phantom one, materializes, and

It's a dull bad trip in a dull movie. I had high enough expectations--I like Tom and Jerry and I remember the novel fondly as kind of a poor man's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland with a boy Alice. But the late-60s/early-70s seem like the dark ages for animation. This is dated and boring, and although there's some imaginative characters and settings, it's just all so sluggish and silly. Blandly creative or maybe creatively bland. The voice work doesn't work, bad plays-on-words really stand out, and I hate the kid, both the flesh and blood and animated versions. And those songs! There must have been a rule during the dark ages of animation that all animated features were required to have really bad songs. I don't know who did the songs for this, but I'm sure he left it off his resume. I'd much rather watch a couple hours of Tom and Jerry cartoons than this. Unless they're the ones with the little gray diapered mouse (Jerry's cousin?). I hated that character. This, by the way, was a cartoon that Abbey couldn't even finish watching. She also likes Tom and Jerry.