Studio: Sony Pictures Entertainment
Release Date: 10/10/2024
Rating: PG
Film Grade: D
The Story: Four-year-old Harold lives in a two-dimensional, nondescript world, but with the aid of a magical purple crayon, he draws up friends, Moose and Porcupine, and they have wild adventures together, before returning safely to his room.
On some days, Harold talks to The Old Man, who created him. The Old Man tells him about the real world, but also tells him that he can’t visit it. One day, The Old Man stops speaking. Harold wants to find him, so he uses his purple crayon to draw a new opening to the real world, where he’ll face a whole new series of adventures.
My Take: For a movie centered around the power and importance of imagination, it’s amazing how bland and unimaginative this turned out to be. While Harold now has a grownup body, he still has the maturity and intellect of a child with no understanding of what he’s walked into. And while he’s transmogrified from a cartoon into a man when he crosses through the doorway, his animal companions are also, inexplicably, transformed into humans as well. Why? I’m guessing CGI budget; there’s no plot-related reason to be found.
Harold brings his crayon with him, and uses it to produce real-life objects, alternately helping situations and creating all kinds of mischief. The setup and results are so vanilla that it wastes the concepts of the book. Zachary Levi plays Harold earnestly, with plenty of child-like wonder and open-eyed enthusiasm, but there’s little he can do to save the film from its lackluster script. Benjamin Bottani is Mel, a kid with an imagination that rivals Harold’s, who exhibits inventiveness and charm, while never crossing over into annoying.
The rest of the cast isn’t as noteworthy. Zooey Deschanel half-heartedly plays Mel’s disillusioned, sad sack mother, who has lost her creative soul after the death of her husband. Lil Rel Howery is hapless Moose, and Tanya Reynolds is the particularly annoying and prickly Porcupine. Jemaine Clement rounds out the major cast members, playing a grandiose budding fantasy author exactly how you would expect. If you’ve seen him as Chevalier in Gentlemen Broncos, you know what to expect.
It’s worth mentioning that this movie contains one of the most blatant and questionable tie-ins that I’ve seen in a while. An overly long segment in the movie takes place in an Ollie’s store. While it extols the wonderous product selection, it also has Mel’s mother griping about how much she absolutely despises working there. Did Ollie’s actually pay any money for this misguided collaboration? Hot tip to anyone in the sales industry – track down whoever talked Ollie’s into participating in this mistake and you’ll have more business than you’ll know what to do with. Less obtrusive is a box of Crayola crayons that appears at the end of the movie, which is both natural and fitting for the story.
Visuals: The lack of imagination extends to the visuals. When Harold enters the real world, he remarks about how unbelievably colorful it is, but what we see isn’t some amped-up, technicolor land, it’s completely dull and ordinary. Later, there’s an opportunity to desaturate the colors, which would have enhanced an emotional downer, but it all has the same flat look. I’ll give some credit to the way the crayon is employed in the world, and it’s kind of fun at first. But the transformed drawings are (mostly) CGI effects that look like CGI effects, so the wonder aspect is diminished.
The disc itself is competent, but the movie could have been demo material in the right hands.
Audio: Likewise, the 5.1 DTS-HD MA soundtrack is unremarkable. There are a few instances where activity surrounds the viewer, but it could have done more with an Atmos track as actions move about the space. The musical score is typical for a late 90s, early 2020s style, low-budget offering. Cloyingly cute with plucky accents, it telegraphs feelings rather than supporting them. At least the dialog is clear and understandable.
Special Features: None of these piqued my interest in the slightest, so I can’t offer any insight on them.
- How to Draw Harold, Porcupine & Moose
- “Colors” Sing Along
- How Do You Spell Imagination?
- Deleted & Extended Scenes
Final Verdict: It’s all too common these days for a movie to be sold and marketed as part of a beloved franchise and yet the filmmakers have only used it as window dressing, giving us something unrelated. Did audiences really want to see a story about a grown-up Harold? It’s a PG movie, but who is it aimed at? Adults will be bored when they’re not insulted by the lack of continuity and dumb plot. The books are meant for young kids, but some of the movie includes some heavy themes like death and banishment.
The opening moments of the movie give us a glimpse of what might have been, with little Harold using crayon and wit to go from adventure to adventure. The end gives us a poignant look at the author and his intent. Everything in between feels weak and disconnected. My wife liked it less than I did, and she has a soft spot for children’s films.
I can’t recommend this one, even for kids. Maybe they could be interested in the action scenes and the fun aspect of the crayon. But the time would be better spent sitting down with them and reading along with the actual books, fostering their imagination as they bring life to the page. If you’re still super curious, wait for it to show up on a streaming service.
Typical Generic Dialog: “Don’t worry, I got this.”
My Review System:JVC DLA-RS3100 4K Ultra High-Definition Front Projector
Elite Screens Sable Frame B2 117” Width with Infinitely Variable Height
Monolith by Monoprice HTP-1 16 Channel Processor with Dirac Live
Monolith by Monoprice 7x200 Watts Amp
Monolith by Monoprice 3x200 Watts + 6x100 Watts Amp
JBL Studio 590 for Left, Center, Right, Wides, and Rears
JBL Studio 580 for Side Surrounds
JBL Studio SCS 8 for Tops
JTR Captivator 1400 Subwoofer X 4
Panasonic DP-UB420 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Player
Oppo BDP-93
NVIDIA Shield Android TV - 4K
Xbox One X
HTPC Running madVR (work in progress)
Remote: URC MX-780
Mini DSP 2X4 HD controlling all subwoofers
APC S15 Power Conditioner with Battery Backup
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