Harold and the Purple Crayon (film)
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 "I don't think anything's possible..."
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Harold and the Purple Crayon is a 2024 American fantasy comedy film directed by Carlos Saldanha (in his live-action feature-length directorial debut) from a screenplay by David Guion and Michael Handelman, based on the 1955 children's book by Crockett Johnson. It is a sequel to the original book, with Harold growing up with his magical purple crayon.
Plot
Harold is a toddler who creates anything into reality with his magic purple crayon. Years later, he goes into the real world with his friends Porcupine and Moose where they get into your standard wacky hijinks.
Why It Can't Draw
- The idea of a live-action adaptation of a popular children's book published 70 years ago was questionable. While there are great examples like Sonic the Hedgehog films, Detective Pikachu, and Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, most of them were critical disasters, like with the Smurf movies, Garfield: The Movie, and the Alvin and the Chipmunks films. Unsurprisingly, this film isn't any better as discussed below.
- Poor direction from Carlos Saldanha, which is sad since this is his first live-action movie.
- Mediocre cinematography.
- Zachary Levi's performance as Harold may have worked for Shazam as well as Eugene from Tangled, but here, he's obnoxious.
- The other performances aren't any better. Lil Rel Howery doesn't want to be here as Moose.
- Tanya Reynolds as Porcupine also sounds like she doesn't want to be here.
- Jermaine Clement sounds too hammy to be taken seriously as the villain Gary. If that isn't enough, his British accent and wearing all black was enough to give it away.
- Atrocious humor that would fit more if it was a Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoon. Examples include:
- Porcupine breaking into a house complete with a cat yowling in the background.
- Gary reads a boring novel complete with a sleeping old woman.
- Porcupine causing a ruckus at a diner while clueless detectives don't do anything about it.
- Prank phone calls courtesy of Harold not understanding that displaying Terri's phone number in the sky was stupid.
- Breaking out of prison with a wrecking ball was a good way to break out a potentially dangerous criminal.
- Getting into a duel by drawing of all things.
- Of course, like any bad live-action adaptation of a children's book, there are bound to be unnecessary pop-culture references like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Chronicles of Narnia.
- The 2D style after the fake ending and the real ending where Harold grows up, while great, wasn't as good compared to Crockett Johnson's art style, as it rather looks more like the art style of Curious George (the 2006 film), proving the art designers didn't read Johnson's other books as reference art or did research.
- There's also another sin when it comes to these live-action adaptations. Product Placement. Such as:
- Ollie's.
- Puma.
- Gain laundry detergent.
- Brownie Brittle.
- Crayola, which plays a role in the ending.
- Incredibly shoddy pacing. It goes too fast for us to develop and get attached to the characters.
- Poor CGI, especially when Moose turns into a real moose.
- Awful special effects that look like they belong from a costume store. This is prevalent in the fantasy scenes.
- There's your typical third-act scene where everyone is sad, the main villain manipulates the hero into giving up his ultimate weapon, the third-act climax where a bunch of stuff happens at once, and a scene where everyone goes back to their respective worlds happily. Except for Gary who gets trapped in his world forever.
- If you think about it, the only thing Gary did that was evil was stealing Harold's crayon to make a world for himself. His whole existence is entirely sad, as all he wanted was for his fantasy novel to get published only to get rejected countless times because it was implied to be boring to others even though Gary thought it was great. The publisher rejected it because she couldn't pronounce the title (G'Garaur), and likely believed that others wouldn't read it because they wouldn't pronounce the title as well. It's sad to see Gary descend to villainy because, like many successful authors from J.K. Rowling (before her controversies) to Stephen King, he was rejected countless times which drove him to steal Harold's crayon.
- What's even sadder is that he's locked into a fantasy world with no method of leaving as Carl burns down the door leading to the real world. Gary is now stuck in the fantasy world he created, and would likely go into insanity believing that whatever he sees is real. And just because his book was rejected, doesn't mean it appealed to the audience demographic that is the library he was reading in, plenty of others may enjoy his work. This potentially good story that may appeal to Gary's intended demographic will never see the light of day.
- Overall, this film ruined Zachary Levi's reputation. Levi descended into a far-right conservative monster by being anti-vax, relied heavily on his Christianity, and blamed fans and critics for the failure of Shazam! Fury of the Gods.
Redeeming Qualities
- The 2D animation is smooth, fluid, and amazingly well done. Had the movie stuck to the 2D animation, the entire movie would be decent, let alone good.
- Some of the humor works; shockingly, there is no toilet humor.
- The fake out ending was hilarious.
- Harold getting suplexed by Mr. Perez was funny.
- Porcupine's wanted poster.
- There are some nods to the book. The characters go to Crockett Johnson's (real name David Johnson Leisk) house only to learn that he died.
- It's also heartwarming for Harold to read Crockett's note on why he created Harold. It was to inspire people to use their imagination.
- The characters are tolerable, which is a lot to say as their actors are bad in their roles.
- It's nice to see Harold on the big screen, ever since his last adaptation 22 years ago.
Reception
Harold and the Purple Crayon received negative reviews from critics. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 26% of 72 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.3/10. The website's consensus reads: "A high-concept treatment that misses out on the blissful simplicity of its source material, Harold and the Purple Crayon is a tribute to imagination that's content to only color inside the lines."
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