Harold And The Purple Crayon Movie Review – Whimsical Or Silly?

This mashup of Green Lantern and Shazam! is tailor-made for kids – but is Harold And The Purple Crayon frivolous fun or just plain boring?

What Is Harold And The Purple Crayon About?

Inside the book created by Crockett Johnson, Harold (played by Zachary Levi) lives out his biggest adventures. Armed with a magical purple crayon, Harold and his friends Moose and Porcupine live out a fantastical life only limited to the confines of their imagination. If it can be drawn, it will come to life.

But what would happen if he wants to follow the narrator’s voice (Alfred Molina) straight out of his 2D world, right into ours? A classic fish-out-of-water tale ensues, complete with an antagonist (played by Jermaine Clement) who wants to take advantage of Harold and his purple crayon.

This is the first film adaptation of the beloved eponymous children’s book.

The Characters

If you have seen Shazam! or almost any of Zachary Levi’s roles, you can probably imagine with what childlike wonder he would approach a fish out of water story. But if the character of Shazam is a kid trapped in an adult’s body, Levi plays Harold as a toddler in the same predicament.

Would it have been better to have Lil Rel Howery (Free Guy, Get Out) play the straight man to Levi’s farcical portrayal? Perhaps. Similarly, Tanya Reynolds’ (Sex Education) farcical B-plot and portrayal adds little to the overall story.

Zooey Deschanel and Benjamin Bottani as mother and son do ground the fantastical chaos to some extent, but isn’t given enough space to have a meaningful impact.

Carlos Saldanha adequately steers things from the director’s seat, but this should come as no surprise. He has also directed family-friendly favourites like Rio (2011), Ferdinand (2017) and a slew of Ice Age films.               

Is It Worth The Watch?

The action, although mostly CGI, is quite entertaining and will have the youngsters invested – maybe even dreaming up their own adventures afterwards.

If you just want the (young!) kids to be entertained for an hour and a half, Harold And The Purple Crayon is the sort of innocent fun to do so. The whimsical world the movie creates seemed destined for so much more though, but ultimately, and ironically so, just lacks the necessary creativity to truly be magical.

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