In the realm of Hollywood IP consumption and beloved children’s books, it is kind of surprising that it took them this long to make a film out of Crockett Johnson’s eponymous childhood tribute to drawing and creativity. Based on the book of the same name, the film version of “Harold and the Purple Crayon” seeks to inspire creativity and hope in the real world, and doesn’t end up conjuring much feelings of anything.
The film follows the titular Harold, now grown and played by Zachary Levi (“Tangled,” “Shazam!”), as he and his two animal friends Porcupine, played by Tanya Reynolds (“Sex Education,” “Emma (2020)”), and Moose, played by Lil Rey Howery (“Get Out,” “Free Guy”), venture to the “real world” to find their narrator/“old man”, voiced by Alfred Molina (“Spider-Man 2,” “Frida”), and end up finding themselves mixed up in the lives of newly widowed mother Terri, played by Zooey Deschanel (“New Girl,” “Elf”), her imaginative son Mel, played by Benjamin Bottani (“Leo (2023)”), and the villainous but incompetent librarian Gary, played by Jermaine Clement (“What We Do in the Shadows,” “Flight of the Conchords”).
It's a very bog-standard family film plot, reusing many of the same “weird thing comes to the real world to the bewilderment of the real people” plot thread that’s been given to every IP adaptation from “Rocky and Bullwinkle” to the “Looney Tunes” to “The Smurfs”. It feels just as lightweight as it ever has, lacking impact and strength in its material. It’s the same kind of story output used in plenty of other films because it's easy to attach to almost any property. But “Harold” the IP lacks the complexity required to allow this kind of structure to flourish in “Harold” the movie.
Levi is fine enough, using the same kind of manchild charms he’s made a career out of over the last decade or so. He’s certainly been better or felt more genuine, but he’s working with a shtick that’s stuck to him and he’s fine enough. Deschanel simply does not want to be here, and it shows during her every scene. Bottani is fine enough as well, in a very standard “kid actor in a family movie” kind of way. Howery and Reynolds stand out the most, thanks to their commitment to the weirdness of their animal-to-human characters and the strength of their cartoonish delivery. Clements is the oddest one of the bunch, as he does a fine job with the oddball character he plays, but the character itself feels completely out of place with the film, tone, and story that exists here. So, take that for what you will.
It’s understandable that a director with plenty of experience in the animated realm like Carlos Saldanha (“Ice Age,” “Robots”) would want to make his first live-action film one with as much creativity and animation baked into the premise as this. His direction is fine and capable, and the movie itself never drags, moving briskly through is 90-minute runtime. The script from David Guion (“Dinner for Schmucks,” “Slumberland”) and Michael Handelman (“Dinner for Schmucks,” “Slumberland”) is also, as previously stated, fine if unadventurous. Then there are two majorly weird developments that both lift the movie up and drag it back down.
The films central concept, of Harold looking for his “narrator” in the real world in the form of author Crockett Johnson, is an interesting metatextual idea, and the resulting inevitability given the authors passing in 1975 resembles the inklings of a film that could grow beyond its initial premise. Somewhere in there is a more mature, committed idea to the concept of imagination, of the “real world”, and of holding onto things. Levi even, for a brief moment, gives a genuinely somber performance. However, the film then spirals right back to its cheery, “what kind of weird animal can you draw” spirit and even goes into more wildly bland and tonally dissonate directions. The third act is so standard and boring that, even if it wasn’t followed by the brief glimpse into a more complex version of this tale, it would still drag the movie as a whole down.
A handful of other weird qualities pop up as well. The musical score from Batu Sener (“The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild”) is a standout feature of the film, but the look of everything is overly bland, from the visual effects to the cinematography itself. There’s also an extended bit of product placement for Ollie’s, the bargain store, which makes it almost look like a rural interpretation of Sears instead of a cheap bargain store filled with wholesale toys and carpets. It’s not just a weird bit of misrepresentation, but also a bizarre choice of product placement for the “Harold and the Purple Crayon” movie.
While there are certainly worse family movies on the market, there are also far far better ones. And more than that, there are more memorable ones, as arguably the biggest sin “Harold and the Purple Crayon” commits is mediocrity. It’s filled with performances that are just fine, a visual style that’s just fine, a plot that’s just fine (and then not), taking a book long remembered as a tale of childhood creativity into another bland IP farm film that’s frustratingly lightweight and leaves almost no impact. 2.5/5
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