A noble attempt to film French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's cult children's book "Le Petit Prince" as a musical; while it doesn't quite work overall, there are splendid scenes. An aviator crash-lands his plane in the Sahara desert, where he is visited by a Cockney child in royal garb who claims to be from a tiny planet in the galaxy. This Little Prince, in search of knowledge, in turn teaches the pilot, who has been robbed of his imagination. Director Stanley Donen is careful not to get too heavy with the pedagogical moments of insight, and he's aided by Christopher Challis' brilliant cinematography and a rich set design, but the song score (by Alan Jay Lerner, who also scripted, and Frederick Loewe) slows the pacing down. The editing is lax as well, allowing sequences such as the Prince's encounter with the Fox, played by Gene Wilder, to go on and on; a montage in a desert oasis (and the journey there by foot) is also interminable. The 'touching' sentiments in the film's final stages are forced, muffling the emotional impact, while the appealing look of the picture is never allowed to give the narrative its wings. This fantasy is grounded, quite literally. ** from ****

Richard Kiley is a pilot who is fed up with earthly literalness and takes to the sky. His airplane conks out and he lands in the middle of the Sahara desert. An oddly dressed little boy, Steven Warner, appears out of nowhere and has a fairy-tale conversation with the pilot about a far away planet that is so small you can walk around it in a few minutes. The songs are by Lerner and Loewe, about whom I've never thought much, but they're not nearly as bathetic as Rogers and Hammerstein who, flinging dignity to the winds, could bring themselves to write a simile in "The Sound of Music" as revolting as this -- "Like a lark who is learning to pray." I like Richard Kiley a lot. He's a decent actor, whether in an heroic role ("Phoenix City Story") or whether he's the kind of Commie villain who would blow off Thelma Ritter's poor gray head ("Pickup On South Street.") He's recited poetry for PBS. He can sing too, as he did in "Man Of La Mancha" on Broadway, and as he does here.

The little kid, Warner, I had to wrestle with, a little. Most children in movies should be left out of the movies. Big nuisances for the most part, cherubic and loathsome. But Warner clears the bar -- barely. His piping Brit voice sounds a little clotted and his big puffy blue eyes suggest somebody just coming down from battery acid, but he'll pass.

As for the rest of the cast -- well, WHAT a cast it is! The third person we're introduced to is Donna McKechney who plays a beautiful rose. Mighty like a rose or not, you ought to see her dance, which you can do on YouTube. You'll have an acute infraction of the myoculinary just watching her.

Anyway, the kid tells Kiley the story of his leaving his little planet and traveling to others where he meets diverse inhabitants, all of them silly, and all their professions mildly skewered by Warner's simple questions. To a king: "What are borders for?" And the nonsensical replies, as from a historian on another planet: "I make things up. That's my profession." And from a soldier: "You want to know what life's all about? Dying -- that's what life's all about." The roles are taken by respected performers like Joss Ackland, Victor Spinetti, and Graham Crowden. Stevens finally winds up on earth.

Kiley is desperately trying to fix the engine of his airplane but Stevens drags him away in search of an oasis, through a phantasmic desert landscape littered with the intact skeletons of giant fish and ruined trunks of palm trees. Of course they find water, and the kid tells the story of meeting a snake, a boa constrictor, scientific name Boa constrictor -- Bob Fosse, derby and all, in the wittiest and most entertaining number in the film. Fosse does a moon walk avant la lettre. Later, Gene Wilder shows up as a fox.

I don't think I'll give away the ending. It's sentimental, naturally, but not as touching as Judy Garland's exit from Oz.

The most suitable sort of adults will find this as touching and innocent as the children, who are likely to get a big kick out of it, if their taste for fairy tales hasn't been warped by computer-generated monsters ripping each other's heads off.

Many have disliked THE LITTLE PRINCE, it was not what one would call a great success. What a pity! It embodies all those great attributes of the musical era of fantasy, entertainment and charm. Stanley Donen is a master craftsman of the musical genre of film making. A lifetime of devotion to his craft of musical theatre - on and off the silver screen. It is a pity the film is not available on DVD, that the film has not made a comeback after all these years. There are no criticisms, gratefulness yes for the likes of Bob Fosse, Victor Spinetti, the elegance of Richard Kiley, and Gene Wilder in perhaps one of his finest, controlled and loving roles ever on screen.

Watch the film and if you have children watch it with them! This film should be a must for once a year screening, in the tradition of THE WIZARD OF OZ. It is music, film, story magic, that touches the heart, touches the soul, touches imagination.