Harold and the Purple Crayon Review: Whimsical Zachary Levi Fails to Rescue Uneven Adaptation
HENDERSON, KY. (WEHT) – Zachary Levi stars in Harold and the Purple Crayon, a kind of continuation – rather than an adaptation – of the classic children’s novel about a young boy with a purple crayon that can create real objects from his drawings in the air. Directed by Carlos Saldanha, the film’s plot sees Harold, a grown man who still acts like a child, drawing a portal into the real world where he befriends a young boy (Benjamin Bottani) whose over-active imagination troubles his single mother (Zoey Deschanel). Together with his friends from the book, Moose (Lil Rel Howery) and Porcupine (Tanya Reynolds), Harold seeks the Old Man, his narrator and author, so they can return to their world, and he hopes to help the boy embrace his imagination.
Harold and the Purple Crayon’s biggest strength is its whimsy and light-hearted fun, which are meant to appeal to very young children. Seeing Harold’s drawn objects come to life will delight young viewers, and there’s a magic to Harold’s view of the world.
However, that whimsy cuts both ways. First, Levi gives the same kind of one-note performance that we saw Shazam! (2019). He seems to think that children only experience one emotion, an over-exuberant happiness and wonder, and as a character, Harold is rather limited as a result.
Second, Harold and the Purple Crayon is essentially at odds with itself. The text of the film says imagination is good, but in the film’s action and plot, imagination creates all of the problems. The film’s villain (Jemaine Clement) is just as imaginative as the heroes, and aside from manner and creepiness, there is little thematically separating the heroes and the villain. Within the film’s character arcs, there’s no place for the characters to go in their development: the protagonists begin embracing their imaginary worlds, the crayon makes imagined objects real, eventually causing problems, and the characters emerge from these problems with the same embrace of imagined worlds.
Ultimately, while some of the special effects might win over young kids, Harold and the Purple Crayon is not worth recommending to a broad audience; even most children should go see Inside Out 2 again. Perhaps a more traditional adaptation would have worked better than this meta take, but what ends up on the screen doesn’t hold together.
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