Harold and the Purple Crayon (2024)

"Harold and the Purple Crayon" stars Zachary Levi, Lil Rel Howery, Jemaine Clement, Tanya Reynolds, Alfred Molina, Benjamin Bottani, and Zooey Deschanel.  Released on August 2, 2024, the film has a man exploring the real world with his magical purple crayon.

The film featured the live-action directorial debut of Carlos Saldanha, who has directed several movies for Blue Sky Studios, like "Ice Age", "Robots", "Rio", and "Ferdinand".  It is based on the 1955 children's book by Crockett Johnson and serves as its sequel.  They say that what we write or draw unlocks our pure imaginations.  For this particular child, his drawings are far and beyond his wildly creative potential.  Most people have that one specific children's book that they remembered during their childhoods, myself included.  Underneath the other stuff stored in our heads lies a book that inspires readers' tranquility and imagination.  That book is Harold and the Purple Crayon, chronicling a young boy's trek through a new world he created with his magical purple crayon.  Its success and legacy spawned multiple sequel books and several adaptations of the source material, including the HBO animated series in 2001.  Following the release of its recent book, Harold's Treasure Hunt, in 2020, Crockett Johnson's iconic young protagonist made his leap from the pages to the big screen via a live-action/animated hybrid that's been in development since the 1990s.  However, instead of properly adapting the book, the film takes it further by continuing Harold's adventures as a grown adult as he journeys into our world...as if that hasn't happened before.  Does this new direction offer enough imagination to delight its target audience?  Let's find out.

The story serves as a continuation of the source material.  Harold (Levi) is now a grown man living inside an imaginative world he created with his magical purple crayon.  He then conjures up the idea of exploring the real world, eager to search for the narrator, the "old man" (Molina), who mysteriously disappeared.  Joined by his friends, Moose (Howery) and Porcupine (Reynolds), Harold enters the live-action world using the portal he draws with his crayon.  There, he meets and befriends single mom Terri (Deschanel) and her imaginative son Mel (Bottani) as he adjusts to the modernities of the real world.  Harold then confronts a disgraced librarian named Gary Natwick (Clement), who plans to use Harold's magic crayon for his own purposes.

I barely remembered "Harold and the Purple Crayon" as I was growing up.  I only know other books like Captain Underpants and The Berenstain Bears, and that's about it.  I did notice the 2001 animated series, but I don't think I watched a single episode of it.  So, my experience with the source material is next to none, which is honestly for the better regarding the film itself.  However, that doesn't make me less concerned about this latest family-friendly adventure.  "Harold and the Purple Crayon" is another live-action/animated hybrid that features the "animated characters entering our world" storyline, which popularized other similar movies like "Fat Albert", the "SpongeBob SquarePants" movies, and "The Smurfs".  While the concept can be a treat for younger audiences, it has also worn out its welcome for more intelligent audiences due to its subpar plots and pop culture references.  In short, I wasn't eagerly excited about the movie, but I was curious whether it has enough imaginative merits to carry this overplayed scenario.  

"Harold and the Purple Crayon" is another family movie resembling every plot from other simplistic kids movies from the early to late 2000s and 2010s.  The primary example is, of course, the "fish out of water/cartoon character enters the real world" storyline, which served as this movie's primary focus.  This doesn't surprise me because this film's producer, John Davis, was also responsible for producing some of those family movies.  Throughout its 90-minute runtime, we see Harold and his friends exploring the "real world," and…well, weird stuff happens during the process.  If you're into those types of storylines, "Harold" offers exactly what you'd expect, for better or worse, with the execution being its true test.  It's easy to admit that these types of kid-friendly movies are flawed, but the charm and entertainment values usually carry them through their rough patches.  I grew up watching most films made for younger audiences, mainly those made in the 2000s, but I periodically revisited them because of their silly charm.  Yes, they don't age well, but I didn't care. I enjoyed watching them more than everyone else while acknowledging their easy-to-spot flaws.

So, I was secretly hoping that "Harold and the Purple Crayon" would fit in that category, which it did.  It's understandably flawed to a fault, relying heavily on kid-friendly humor over ingenious storytelling, but it's also not without some small moments that I enjoyed.  However, to my utmost surprise, it's also shockingly dull.  I know what you're going to say: Marcus, how could you get bored with a kids movie?  Well, the answer is quite simple: I'm a 30-year-old man who talks about movies for a living, whether they're made for adults or younger kids.  When I go into films like "Harold", I expect to be as entertained as its target audience, plain and simple.  While "Harold and the Purple Crayon" may have a few moments that'll delight a few kids, they're not enough to elevate the story's imagination and heart to impress anyone older than five or six, which was ironic considering its creative concept.

But, before I state why the film didn't work for me, let's turn our attention to a couple of merits that I tolerate.  One of them is the cast, with Zachary Levi leading the charge, hoping to get himself back on track post-Shazam.  Levi is one of the actors who can be entertaining if the project suits his talents, regardless of his issues outside his career.  I really enjoyed him in "Shazam" and "Tangled", but even I must admit that he was a weird choice to play a grown-up Harold.  It seemed like he was chosen because he's an A-lister, and kids recognized him from his other family-friendly selections.  That's the film industry for you.  For the most part, Levi made an okay effort to provide a livelier and more charismatic man-child, even though the results were hit-and-miss.  Lil Rel Howery and Tanya Reynolds were also fine with their performances as Moose and Porcupine, respectively. However, Moose has more screen time than Porcupine due to Howery's larger presence in the industry.  I don't blame them, as I also liked Howery in his other works, but considering his popularity, I think he deserves better roles than this.  Zooey Deschanel is also another actor who's just there for the paycheck regarding her role as Terri.  The same goes for Jemaine Clement, whose role as Gary Natwick struggled to make a livelier impact in his antagonistic personality.  Fun fact: this is the latest collaboration between Carlos Saldanha and Jemaine Clement, as Clement voiced Nigel in the director's "Rio" films.

Another element I tolerated was the 2D animation and visuals, with the former produced by Bent Image Lab.  The 2D animated segments only showed up at the beginning and end, but honestly, these were as close as we would get for a traditional animated kids film in theaters.  These segments were simplistic and to the point, like the source material, but they offered something nostalgic from their color palette and straightforward designs that would satisfy those who grew up with the books.  These sequences were the only good merits of the film because they resemble what could've been if it stuck with this style instead of using the "real world" element as an auto-pilot mechanism for storytelling.  But, on the bright side, the visuals for Harold's drawings in the live-action setting were sometimes compelling.  

These elements would've made for another diverting yet imperfect family treat, so…what went wrong?  I've been asking myself the same question during the drive home, and after a few minutes, I've come up with a straightforward answer: the execution.  The screenplay by David Guion and Michael Handelman was filled with one kid-friendly cliche after another, with just enough corny dialogue and mundane humor to make even the 2000s kids cringe.  These screenplays are usually tolerable if the charm exists, but "Harold and the Purple Crayon" is one of the few that doesn't provide much of it, so it came off more as a lifeless drawing than a creative one.  It also featured plenty of cliched characters who didn't pack as much interest as they intended to, lacking the emotional impact of the movie's messages, especially in its ending.  

The film was also surprisingly fast-paced but for the wrong reasons.  One minute, we're in the cartoon world with Harold and his animal buddies, and the next, we have Lil Rel Howery transforming into a real-life moose.  While it helps to keep the kids' attention, I feel like it's too scattershot for its own good regarding its subpar editing and Saldanha's direction.  It's similar to a kid speed-reading through a novel for a book report.  They want to go through the plot details as quickly as possible, but they'll miss several more in the process.  I can't say I blame Carlos Saldanha for how the movie looked since he was doing his job envisioning it for his audience.  Plus, everyone was involved with the project, not just the director.  However, regarding how tedious the film was, it's hard to ignore Saldanha becoming another animation director whose vision was severely limited by Hollywood's mindset for live-action movies, especially ones made for families.

Overall, "Harold and the Purple Crayon" lacks the creativity and imaginative spark to make its narrative drawings stand alongside other family-friendly options.  It resembles almost every kids movie from the previous two decades, but doesn't have a clue how to mix those corny flaws with its fun and lively charm.  The cast did okay in their roles, and the animation and visuals were as eye-popping as the titular character's purple-colored drawings.  Unfortunately, they're quickly overshadowed by its unimaginative execution regarding its formulaic screenplay, mundane direction, scattershot pacing, and dull humor.  You could say I'm not the right target audience, and you may be right.  If I were much younger, I would've liked it a bit more than I would have as an adult, but even then, I still wouldn't consider this a part of my childhood like several other family-friendly films I grew up watching.  In other words, you're better off drawing real pictures to hang on the refrigerator door instead.  But if you're still interested in watching it, whether you're a fan of the source material or not, I'd say wait until it's on streaming.

D-