Harold and the Purple Crayon (2024)

Harold-and-the-Purple-Crayon-(2024)
Harold and the Purple Crayon (2024)

Right from the start, I would like to say that I am an admirer of Harold and the Purple Crayon and I have this book written by Crockett Johnson in my collection, it was published in 1955 and I consider it a classic for gifting newborn babies with a purple crayon attached to the pages, so when I get to know that someone is making a film adaptation, it raises some red flags for me. I say this because, I have seen Enter the Dragon, the animated television series ‘The Magic School Bus’, and have witnessed many children’s stories being adopted and presented in motion pictures which leads to a shoddy adaptation of the storyline. Sure, I too appreciate how films, especially animated ones that incorporate children’s stories like ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ created by Maurice Sendak, are able to captivate audiences. It’s just that, so many other film adaptations are done in such poor taste, for instance, “The Cat in the Hat”, which made sure to ruin what the original book was able to accomplish in the first place.

Now “Harold and the Purple Crayon” is out in theatres and this time as a full live-action motion picture. It starts on a surprisingly engaging note: a 2-D animated flashback that recaps the events of the book Harold had gone through. This animated sequence captures the look and feel of the book’s distinctive art style, which is narrated by Alfred Molina. sadly, that part only runs for approximately 90 seconds. This is where the real plot takes off. A total transition to blatant over-the-top garishness, leading me to believe the narrative more resembled a Hames intention of a Jumanji spin-off than something that could’ve been devised by the late Johnson work. This is a film that preaches the value of honoring creativity while simultaneously demonstrating nothing creative throughout the film’s overly excessive time.

After that recap of the original story, we see a grown-up Harold (Zachary Levi) who is still enjoying the company of his friends Moose (Lil Rel Howery), Porcupine (Tanya Reynolds), and the narrator’s voice. The world of cartoons was as delightful as the photographer who narrated in this cartoon world. One day however, the voice of the narrator goes missing and Harold is forced to utilize his incredible crayon to draw a doorway leading into the world they are in, Harold with his other two friends, intends to chase down the picture who had created the world in the first place. However, the world outside is strange and bewildering for Harold and Moose, who had taken a love form and became a human form that started to wander around and unfortunately began bumping into Terri (Zooey Deschanel) and Melvin (Benjamin Bottani), mother and son still grieving the death of the husband and father and lost in depression. They spent the night in her house for some reason even Harold was confused but discovered Mel as a brother, he even has an imaginary pet that has attributes of eagle, lion, and alligator and features him in the magic crayon. (Portia is somewhere far from here causing trouble by herself as she had disassociated from the rest.)

Even though Terri is working at Ollie’s, who thank them for their service more than Johnson’s essay does, Mel in the end takes it upon himself to aid Harold and Twin Moose in locating the narrator, resulting in countless humorous slapstick situations such as the three of them soaring in an airplane or the chaos they unleash in a shop. They also seek the cooperation of Gary (Jermaine Clement), a perverted librarian who is obsessed with Terri, who authored “The Glaive of Gagaroh,” which bears no sense of logic as it is a story that is rather dull and cannot belong to be told since it never gets told completely regardless the movie messing with the fanbase of “Krull” too. He then, after some time talking to her, pours the truth in his ear and tells her that he is one of the characters of the book, which prompts Harold, Moose, and Mel to travel to the residence of Crockett Johnson where they believe they will find him at last. They could hardly have reached that point in the first place in spite of the fact that Google had kindly located the house’s location: it most certainly would have spared them the most important reason they even made that trip in the first place. Gary, on the other hand, after witnessing the power of the crayon, was looking for a means to seize the crayon and fulfill his dream of creating the world of the novel he wrote.

However, the concept of turning Crockett’s sixty-four-paged booklet into a full-category motion picture has always been one that leaves much to be desired.

I don’t think even the most negative of people would have imagined a situation this grim. For one, Harold has now become one of the most widely despised characters on screen, thanks to the idiotic plot by Guion and Handelman, which tried really hard to make Harold seem like a free-spirited child, akin to Buddy in ‘Elf’. All he does is make him unbearable there. Levi’s terrible performance doesn’t help either, with Saldanha taking a borderline sadistic number of shots before saying cut and forcing a weak Levi to go out with the eight ways of nailing Swanson, everything Saldanha shot was still possible. The plot, I would say has a narrative but if somebody asks me what that is, I will probably tell them that it is vague imagery that is not worth explaining, the big set-pieces are the typical CGI pap we’re endlessly bombarded with, the tenderness was struggling to break through the surface and there was in fact, never any tenderness between two stories, yes, a movie, set around literature for children, where the villain is none other than a f***ing librarian, is annoying.

Before you leave me comments calling me out for not having the child’s perspective in trying to appreciate this film, based on the evidence available, no one concerned with the making of ‘Harold and the Purple Crayon’ attempted to reach out to younger audiences for any serious reason. It is indeed unfortunate that the project concerned with this IP tried to only exploit the goodwill of an already well-known property in a bid to rake in some revenue from families who had already watched ‘Inside Out 2’ and ‘Despicable Me 4’ and were in chambers for something else to watch than actually doing justice to the IP created out of such hope.

In the end, ‘Harold and the Purple Crayon’ is the result of a collaborative effort in the culture of people who believe that children don’t care about anything other than excessive flashy and noise-filled content branded as family entertainment. If you are a concerned parent you will do well to avoid this film and instead take the same ticket money and purchase Crockett’s original storybook along with the sequels. They will thank you for this one day.

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