Harold and the Purple Crayon (2024) Columbia/Comedy-Fantasy RT: 91 minutes Rated PG (mild action and thematic elements) Director: Carlos Saldanha Screenplay: David Guion and Michael Handelman Music: Batu Sener Cinematography: Gabriel Beristain Release date: August 2, 2024 (US) Cast: Zachary Levi, Lil Rel Howery, Zooey Deschanel, Benjamin Bottani, Tanya Reynolds, Jemaine Clement, Alfred Molina, Pete Gardner, Camille Guaty, Ravi Patel, Zele Avradopoulos.
Rating: **
Harold and the Purple Crayon, the 1955 children’s book by Crockett Johnson, celebrates the power of imagination with its simple but beautiful story of a little boy and his magic purple crayon. I loved it as a kid and still do as an adult. Harold and the Purple Crayon, the 2024 film adaptation by Carlos Saldanha (Rio 1 & 2), demonstrates lack of imagination with its lame and unappealing story of a grown man and his magic purple crayon. I might have liked it as a kid, but I don’t like it as an adult.
To be fair, I expected Harold and the Purple Crayon to be far worse than it actually is. The trailer made it look unbearable due in no small part to Zachary Levi. The Shazam actor plays the “adult” version of Harold. I use adult in quotes because his Harold is more like a manchild than a grown man. Any way you slice it, he’s annoying and obnoxious. I can see Johnson spinning in his grave over this and pretty much everything else about this movie.
The best and only good part in Harold and the Purple Crayon is the 2D animated sequence that opens the film. It’s a recap of the original book narrated by Alfred Molina. It reproduces its visual style perfectly. Unfortunately, it lasts only 90 seconds. Then the actual movie begins. It swiftly goes downhill from there.
Adult Harold still lives in his cartoon world with his two besties, Moose (Howery, Get Out) and Porcupine (Reynolds, Sex Education). One night, he asks the narrator some heavy questions about his existence. The next day, the narrator is gone. Harold decides to go to the real world to look for him. He draws a door to the RW with his crayon and goes through it followed by Moose. They both land in a park as flesh-and-blood beings, Moose in human form. Naturally, they find the RW a confusing place.
Shortly after arriving, the guys almost get run over by widowed mother Terri (Deschanel, Elf) and her preteen son Melvin (Bottani, Bromates) who has some kind of imaginary pet, an eagle/lion/alligator combo. They’ve been having a tough time of it since the husband/father died. She hates her job at Ollie’s Bargain Outlet. Bullies pick on him at school. Meeting Harold could be the shake-up their lives need.
Even though it defies common sense, Terri agrees to let Harold and Moose stay at her place. It doesn’t take long for Harold to shake things up. He recruits Melvin to help him find his “old man”. The boy takes him to the library when they ask librarian/wannabe fantasy author Gary (Clement, What We Do in the Shadows) for help locating a man whose name they don’t know. Predictably, Gary turns out to be more foe than friend once he figures out who Harold really is. He wants to get his mitts on that purple crayon for his own selfish purposes.
Meanwhile, Harold and Moose proceed to wreak havoc in the RW as does Porcupine who has her own set of misadventures as he looks for her friends. They all get arrested at one point, but escape is no problem once Harold has his magic crayon. Of their escapades, the only one that elicits so much as a half-smile is when they trash Ollie’s while filling in for Terri.
To its credit, Harold and the Purple Crayon isn’t near as awful as the 2003 abomination The Cat in the Kat. I still say the widow Geisel should have sued everybody involved. I don’t feel as strongly about Harold and the Purple Crayon. On the contrary, I feel indifferent about it. I dislike it, but not intensely. It’s a stupid movie without an ounce of intelligence, creativity or originality. It rips off elements of Fat Albert (2004) and the Jumanji movies. It tries to be zany, but keeps falling flat on its face. It’s just not as funny or fun as it thinks it is.
What gets to me most is the antagonist Gary, an arrogant sort with a thing for Terri, a feeling obviously not reciprocated by her which shows she at least has a modicum of sense. He’s written a 700-page fantasy novel called “The Glave of Gagaroh” (nice shout-out to Krull) that no publisher wants to touch. Nobody can even pronounce it correctly. He never comes off as threatening, not even when he briefly chains up Harold and Melvin in a dungeon. He’s too pathetic to be anything worse than a piddling nuisance.
Levi is terrible in the lead. He never once makes Harold likable. I just wanted him to go back to his own world and leave Terri alone. Howery is only slightly less annoying. Bottani is okay as the weak kid who gets to turn the tables on his tormentors in one scene. Deschanel, who I usually like, is on autopilot as the mom who used to dream of being a concert pianist before life got in the way. What are the odds Harold will draw her a piano to play in a public place?
Kids have had it good at cinemas this summer with Inside Out 2 and Despicable Me 4. Those movies were worth the price of admissions and concessions, both of which are costly. Harold and the Purple Crayon doesn’t come anywhere close to worth it with its flat visuals, below average CGI and tired storyline. Buy the books for the kids instead. Any one of them is infinitely more rewarding than the movie which will probably show up on digital in a month’s time.
