Phantom Tollbooth, The

image for Phantom Tollbooth, The

Short takes

Not suitable under 4; parental guidance to 7 (violence, scary scenes, themes)

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This topic contains:

  • overall comments and recommendations
  • details of classification and consumer advice lines for Phantom Tollbooth, The
  • a review of Phantom Tollbooth, The completed by the Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) on 11 February 2025.

Overall comments and recommendations

Children under 4 Not suitable due to cartoon violence, scary scenes, and themes. Also, some of the vocabulary used may be confusing.
Children aged 4–7 Parental guidance recommended due to cartoon violence, scary scenes, and themes. Also, some of the vocabulary used may be confusing.
Children aged 8 and over Ok for this age group.

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Australian Government Classification Board and the associated consumer advice lines. Other classification advice (OC) is provided where the Australian film classification is not available.

Name of movie: Phantom Tollbooth, The
Classification: G
Consumer advice lines: The content is very mild in impact
Length: 90 minutes

ACCM review

This review of the movie contains the following information:

A synopsis of the story

Milo (played and voiced by Butch Patrick), a bored young boy who struggles in school, has a magic tollbooth appear in his bedroom. Upon driving through the tollbooth, he finds himself in a magical but confusing animated world – the Kingdom of Wisdom in the Lands Beyond. Milo travels through the many lands, including the lazy forest of the Doldrums and the feuding kingdoms, Digitopolis (Kingdom of Mathematics) and Dictionopolis (Kingdom of Words), both arguing whether numbers or words are more important. Milo’s mission is to save the princesses, Sweet Rhyme and Pure Reason, from the Castle in the Air, and as he travels through the world, he makes new friends, namely Tock (voiced by Larry Thor) the ‘watchdog’ with an actual pocket watch in his body who teaches him many lessons on the importance of taking action and being responsible. In the end, Milo frees the princesses, leaves the Kingdom of Wisdom and returns to the real world.

Themesinfo

Children and adolescents may react adversely at different ages to themes of crime, suicide, drug and alcohol dependence, death, serious illness, family breakdown, death or separation from a parent, animal distress or cruelty to animals, children as victims, natural disasters and racism. Occasionally reviews may also signal themes that some parents may simply wish to know about.

Conflict; Magic; Prejudice; Education.

Use of violenceinfo

Research shows that children are at risk of learning that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution when violence is glamourised, performed by an attractive hero, successful, has few real life consequences, is set in a comic context and / or is mostly perpetrated by male characters with female victims, or by one race against another.

Repeated exposure to violent content can reinforce the message that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution. Repeated exposure also increases the risks that children will become desensitised to the use of violence in real life or develop an exaggerated view about the prevalence and likelihood of violence in their own world.

There is some violence in this movie, including:

  • A roadrunner-style fight between the Spelling Bee and the Humbug, with no major injury shown.
  • Some of the antagonists in the film are ‘attacked’ with the words ‘humility’ or ‘kindness’ and are shown to explode or disappear.
  • Tock the watchdog fights a monster. He is injured and ‘stops ticking’, however, he ends up being fine.

Material that may scare or disturb children

Under fiveinfo

Children under five are most likely to be frightened by scary visual images, such as monsters, physical transformations.

In addition to the above-mentioned violent scenes, there are some scenes in this movie that could scare or disturb children under the age of five, including the following:

  • There are scary images of dark forests full of ‘melting’ creatures. These creatures are little animals that are animated in a very liquidised way and sometimes melt into one another, this effect is to visualise laziness but may be disturbing for some children.
  • During the climactic ‘fight’ scene, there is darker, creepy imagery used for the monsters they have to fight and suspenseful music is playing.
  • An image of a scary witch shadow but she ends up not looking scary, just an image of her shadow.
  • A human-looking character but with no facial features.
  • Some distorted imagery is shown throughout – psychedelic style images of spinning bright colours and flashing colours in a distorted way.

Aged five to eightinfo

Children aged five to eight will also be frightened by scary visual images and will also be disturbed by depictions of the death of a parent, a child abandoned or separated from parents, children or animals being hurt or threatened and / or natural disasters.

In addition to the above-mentioned violent scenes and scary visual images, there are some scenes in this movie that could scare or disturb children aged five to eight, including the following:

  • The dog companion is stomped by a larger monster and is injured with a suggestion that he might be dead.
  • The scary images may also scare or disturb children in this age group.

Aged eight to thirteeninfo

Children aged eight to thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic threats and dangers, violence or threat of violence and / or stories in which children are hurt or threatened.

  • Nothing further noted.

Product placement

  • None noted.

Sexual references

  • None noted.

Nudity and sexual activity

  • None noted.

Use of substances

  • None noted.

Coarse language

There is some coarse language in this movie, including:

  • Name-calling from the Humbug, such as “odious wasp”, “didactic drone”, “fool” and “verbose vermin”, directed at the Spelling Bee.
  • The vocabulary used throughout the movie can be confusing and is often unnecessarily convoluted. Some of the terms used are also of the 1970s and bear little to no context for modern audiences. For example, dyne; doff; hubbub; doldrums; ragamuffin; rigmarole.

In a nutshell

The Phantom Tollbooth is a comedic, action adventure which is both live-action and animation. The 1970 film, based on the highly regarded 1961 book of the same name by Norman Juster, is likely to appeal to a family audience. It is entertaining and includes many comedic wordplays and adventures that children and parents are sure to enjoy. A caution of mild violence and scary imagery warrants parental guidance for ages 4 to 7 years old.

The main messages from this movie are about the importance of thinking, knowledge and learning new things; and trying your best.

Values in this movie that parents may wish to reinforce with their children include:

  • Responsibility
  • Education
  • Friendship
  • Cooperation
  • Conflict resolution
  • Perseverance.

This movie could also give parents the opportunity to discuss with their children attitudes and behaviours, and their real-life consequences, such as:

  • Understanding that while sometimes, mild violence in a movie may be funny, if it happens in real life, it is not funny and somebody could be hurt.
  • Reinforcing cooperative conflict resolution and discussing the themes of prejudice.
  • Discussing specific scenes, such as, when Milo gets stuck in the Doldrums from his laziness or that the coarse language used were not actually curse words but were still used to put people down.