HAROLD AND THE PURPLE CRAYON:
A CHILD WITH A CRAYON CAN DRAW A BETTER MOVIE THAN THIS!
By Nico Beland
Movie Review: * ½ out of 4
COLUMBIA PICTURES
Zachary Levi in Harold and the Purple Crayon
Sheesh, let’s just get this review over with!
The child with a magic purple crayon from the pages of Crockett Johnson’s beloved children’s book comes to life (as a grown man) in the film adaptation of Harold and the Purple Crayon. Let me get this out the way, I did not grow up with the book so I don’t really have a nostalgic connection like a lot of other people do, but I certainly knew about it and that there was an animated series based on it for young children on Cartoon Network’s Tickle U preschool block (But that was long after my time).
I can see the appeal and charm, a story about a young boy with a magic crayon that makes anything he draws come to life with tons of imagination and wholesomeness. But then, the movie was announced by Sony Pictures and director Carlos Saldanha (Ice Age franchise, Rio 1 and 2, Ferdinand).
When I heard Zachary Levi (Chuck, Tangled, Shazam! 1 and 2) was attached to the film and because I had never read the book before, I assumed he was cast as a parental figure for a child actor playing Harold. That all changed when the poster and trailer dropped showing Levi as an adult Harold which completely baffled me because it didn’t even look like a real movie, but it is and I got a ticket to it…and now I’m talking about it.
I tried to be open to it because they did something similar with Dora the Explorer not too long ago and that turned out surprisingly good so I was hopeful that maybe the same thing could happen with Harold. Yeah, Harold and the Purple Crayon and Dora and the Lost City of Gold should never be mentioned in the same sentence because this movie is AWFUL!
For a film that’s banking on imagination, I was fascinated in just how creatively empty and manufactured this movie is. We’re in 2024 and you’d think filmmaking like this would have been outlawed after the 2010s ended and yet here we are.
The film follows Harold, a young boy living in a whimsical, hand-drawn storybook world where anything is possible thanks to his magic purple crayon alongside his friends, Moose and Porcupine. But when Harold grows up and decides to visit his Old Man AKA the book’s Narrator (voiced by Alfred Molina-Raiders of the Lost Ark, Frida, Spider-Man 2), he draws himself a magic portal to…the real world where things aren’t as magical as he had hoped (Yeah, it's one of those movies)!
Harold is now a live-action man (Levi) and Moose (Lil Rey Howery-The Carmichael Show, Get Out, The Angry Birds Movie 2) and Porcupine (Tanya Reynolds-Delicious, Sex Education, The Actor) have turned into humans and the three of them embark on an adventure to find Harold’s Old Man. Along the way, they befriend a widowed mother named Terri (Zooey Deschanel-Elf, New Girl, (500) Days of Summer) and her son Mel (Benjamin Bottani) and encounter a librarian-turned-failing author known as Gary Natwick (Jemaine Clement-Rio 1 and 2, Men in Black 3, Avatar: The Way of Water) who hatches a scheme to steal Harold’s crayon and use it for evil unless Harold and his friends can stop him.
The film also stars Ravi Patel (Meet the Patels, Wrecked, Wonder Woman 1984) as Prasad, Camille Guaty (Raising Dad, Prison Break, Family Guy) as Junior Detective Silva, and Pete Gardner (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) as Detective Love.
Overall, Harold and the Purple Crayon is one of the laziest kids movies I’ve seen in a while and a prime example of how NOT to turn a beloved children’s book into a feature film. It takes effort to take an imaginative story, rip all of its dignity out, and turn it into a manufactured and surprisingly soulless film with very little creativity both in the movie and behind the scenes.
This really has that bad Sony Pictures Smurfs movie vibe even right down to the characters finding a magic portal to the real world. It’s the whole characters from another world end up in ours, they don’t fit in, wacky hijinks ensue, and by the end there’s some kind of heartfelt message plot from a lot of bad children’s films…except I don’t remember what the message was!
It also seems like it’s trying to be like the Barbie movie from last year where it’s really meta with its story, I guess. However, Barbie had far better world-building and therefore we understood the rules for Barbie Land and how they might differ in the real world on top of just having a brilliant storyline.
There is barely any time devoted to Harold’s animated crayon-drawn world so we don’t know how it works and how it contrasts with the real world. Literally right after the opening is done, Harold decides to find his Old Man and draws the portal to real world, at least the live-action Smurfs movies and Fat Albert had some world-building before jumping into reality.
This movie is on autopilot from start to finish and feels like it’s rushing through a checklist of kids movie tropes. Uninspired story, animal characters moving funny because they’re humans now, aren’t they wacky?, goofy shenanigans set to silly music, product placement since this is a Sony movie, and very forced attempts at heart disguised as wholesomeness, YOU GOT THE WHOLE PLATE!
I wouldn’t say it’s quite as bad as The Emoji Movie because this movie at least attempts to be charming, but that’s not really a compliment and it’s still bogged down by lazy storytelling, equally lazy humor, and a surprising lack of imagination.
Zachary Levi is probably the only actor in this movie who’s fully committed to his role and to be fair, he plays the part of a bumbling manchild well as evidenced in Shazam!, but the script gives him very little to work with and makes you wish you were watching Shazam! or even Tangled instead. Everyone else is either there, barely have any passion to their performances, or just flat out terrible with Zooey Deschanel as this mother who is skeptical about Harold’s magic and doesn’t believe in mystical things coming off as very wooden and delivering an even worse performance than in The Happening, and I like Deschanel as an actress which makes it hurt even more.
Don’t bother seeing Harold and the Purple Crayon especially if you’re a parent with kids, it’s an uninspired and cynical imitation of a wholesome and creative story that insults its audience. Small children might enjoy Zachary Levi’s goofy antics and some of the visuals, but that’s about it…go see Inside Out 2 or if you really want to, Despicable Me 4instead and melt this ugly crayon of a movie down into a candle.
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