Zathura is a rarity: a stellar fantasy that faces down childhood anxieties with feet-on-the-ground maturity.

The result is a glorious low-tech pleasure that may be the most lyrical, phantasmagoric boys' adventure story since Joe Dante's Explorers.

Will work better for younger viewers than older ones. There's not much plot to absorb and there's plenty of action, so this is the kind of spectacle that will appeal to those without long attention spans.

Favreau again delivers that rare beast -- a family film that even childless adults can enjoy.

Its unwieldy title notwithstanding, Zathura: A Space Adventure is arguably the best adaptation of a Chris Van Allsburg book to date.

Neither pandering nor dull, Zathura plays exactly like a no-limits replica of the kind of space adventure that imaginative kids left to their own devices might enact.

This handmade feel gives Zathura an appealing, childlike sense of wonder, an element too often forgotten in movies with many times the budget and technological resources.

Director Jon Favreau, who dipped profitably into family entertainment with 2003's "Elf," effectively recreates the illustrative universe of a good children's book, but he's stuck with a story that noisily grinds its gears.

One thing: Perhaps my studio-cynic hackles are raised imprudently, but either Favreau reimagined the boys' teenage sister to read as matinee sex bomb, Tootsie Rolling around in pink boxers for half the film, or children's books have become a lot hotter since I put down Seuss and Sendak for Encyclopedia Brown.

It's a tick better than the movie version of "Jumanji," if that's any help. If you liked the book, you'll find the film of "Zathura" faithful in most respects, though not so much amplified as padded.