Norton Juster

(On Cable TV, November 2021) There’s an admirable intellectual ambition to The Phantom Tollbooth that does much to set it apart from other ordinary animated films aimed at younger audiences — a love of knowledge, fun with wordplay, and ideas that reach above the usual family movies. There’s a live-action framing device to go around the animation, and much of the plot has to do with a boy trying to reconcile a fantastical kingdom divided in words and numbers. It doesn’t make the result a phenomenal film nor even one worth revisiting: the animation is TV grade and doesn’t have much charm, while some of the writing seems without grace. Still, it’s unusual enough to be interesting. Don’t ask me to compare Norton Juster’s book with the film adaptation, though — I read the novel more than twenty years ago, and don’t remember much beyond it being unusual and clever. That’s likely to be my assessment of the film in a few years as well.