Crockett Johnson’s 1955 picture book Harold and the Purple Crayon isn’t talked about with the same passion as other adolescent literary giants like Winnie the Pooh or Pinocchio, but its warm atmosphere and simple, earnest style helped it survive over the last seventy years. The book is about curious four-year-old Harold and his magic purple crayon that allows him to craft entire worlds through the will of his imagination. Harold’s imagination runs wild, drawing everything from apple trees to frightening dragons, blueberry pies to parachutes. He befriends a moose and porcupine he creates along the way, and ultimately uses the moon to guide himself back home to drift off to sleep.
Though Johnson unfortunately passed away in 1975, his body of work lives on and continues to inspire those who strive to reach new heights with the power of their imagination. The unfortunate reality, however, is not everyone uses their imagination to innovate. Case in point: Harold and the Purple Crayon (2024). The cinematic adaptation of Johnson’s beloved book panders and meanders in the wake of similar stories that came before it, bringing nothing new to the table to support its existence.
The film opens in the same art style as Johnson’s book. Two minutes into the film, omniscient narrator Johnson (voiced by Alfred Molina) concludes where the book normally stops – if only we were that fortunate. Harold (Zachary Levi) continues to grow up into his forties alongside Moose (Lil Rel Howery) and Porcupine (Tanya Reynolds), and The Narrator answers Harold’s ever-curious questions about the “Real World” he lives in. One day, The Narrator is no longer around to answer Harold’s questions, leaving him alone with nothing but his drawings and a void of silence.
That is until Harold gets the idea to draw a door into the Real World. Upon entering the Real World, Harold and the Purple Crayon goes through the same motions as the Elfs (2003), Enchanteds (2007), Smurfs (2011), and Barbies (2023) that came before it. Through no explanation other than just-go-with-it kids film logic, Moose and Porcupine are given human personas, the latter of whom gets separated for much of the film’s first two-thirds. Moose, however, accompanies Harold on a series of wacky adventures with his magic purple crayon in tow to find The Narrator (or “Old Man”).
They’re not alone in braving the Real World, however. Quickly into their escapades, Harold and Moose run across Terri (a couldn’t be less invested Zooey Deschanel), a single mom skeptical of Harold’s quirky imagination, and her son Mel (a better than average Benjamin Bottani), an outcast at school whose only friend is an imaginary dragon named Carl. Terri’s lack of imaginative whimsy comes from the loss of her husband, the stresses of raising a child alone, working a full-time job, and putting aside her dreams of being a professional musician. Mel simply wants a friend and is quick to latch onto Harold’s spirited naivety and joins Harold on his mission.
After getting into the shenanigans you’d expect from this type of setup (they draw skates on their shoes, eat ice cream, fly an airplane), Mel thinks he’s found a lead from Gary Natwick (Jemaine Clement), a self-obsessed librarian whose dreams of publishing his elaborate fantasy novel come to no avail. However, once Natwick makes the connection between Harold’s quest and the actual book he’s based on, the race is on to possess the crayon for himself to make his fantasy world a reality.
There’s a lot that happens over the course of Harold and the Purple Crayon’s overstuffed runtime, but very little of it feels fresh or substantive with its cliché story structure. When you’re not questioning the basic rules that the film establishes in this universe, you’re wondering why no one in the Real World is reacting to the phenomenal powers of Harold’s magic crayon.
Not to mention, I was flabbergasted by Mel’s wistful life lessons from his late father convincing his mother to give two strange men a ride to their home, let them stay overnight in their house, allow them to spend alarming amounts of unsupervised time with her son, and continue to allow this after God knows how many things go wrong.
In fact, let’s recap some of the many questionable morals this film passively supports: Talking to strangers, following strangers around with the promise of fantastic adventures, implicitly trusting strangers based on baseless claims they’ve made, publicly posting your parents’ phone number to strangers, doing “helpful” things for people without asking them first. The list goes on and on. There’s even a scene where a little girl in a restaurant is told not to draw on the tables with crayons and only draw on paper. Porcupine overhears this and tells her to draw wherever she’d like. I’m sure parents everywhere are thanking the screenwriters personally for that one.
If that wasn’t enough, like many of these modern-day adaptations, the film is suffocated by many long, boring scenes establishing nothing greater than surface-level plot threads, humor that rarely registers more than a chuckle, and an obnoxious amount of product placement. Sony-sponsored TVs and phones are assuredly expected, but the rampant, shameless promotion of national big box store Ollie’s Bargain Outlet is particularly embarrassing.
That’s not to say that the root of Harold and the Purple Crayon’s messaging doesn’t ring true. The ending scene is heartfelt and the film ultimately ends on a note that addresses the reality of grief in a moving way that will resonate with kids and parents. As far as the performances go, Levi is an amiable actor with enough charisma to keep the film’s momentum fairly consistent, and Bottani is much better than most child actors in this caliber of film.
Outside of that, though, there’s little to Harold and the Purple Crayon that hasn’t been done with much more substance and purpose in this industry already. In a climate where Barbie simultaneously entertains and acts as an introduction to feminism for audiences everywhere and Elf tugs at the heartstrings with wholesome Christmas cheer in a post-ironic environment, Harold and the Purple Crayon’s attempts at capturing its source material come up short.
I hate to leave on a glum note, so I’ll leave you with this.
On my way out of the theater, there were some promotional purple crayons in a small box on a freebie table of assorted posters, so I grabbed one. I arrived back at my apartment complex, greeted by the collective hellos of some of the neighbor kids, who I made light chit-chat with about everything from pickleball to their favorite fishing spots. I gave the group the box of crayons to their excitement and asked them to draw something.
Don’t worry, I told them to only draw on paper.
Review Courtesy of Landon Defever
Feature Image Credit to Sony Pictures via IMDB
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