Harold and the Purple Crayon

The thing about writing reviews for movies you’d otherwise skip is sometimes you have to take the hit and give it a go. It’s natural to judge a book by its cover. A poster could be uninspired or a trailer could just be a poorly edited mess of nonsense and not sell what you’re ultimately going to see. However, in the case of Harold and the Purple Crayon starring Zachary Levi, you can judge every inch of the cover because that is exactly what you're going to get. And what do you get? A film that has little or no thematic resemblance or even spiritual resemblance to Crocket Johnson’s classic children’s book and is instead a cloying, obnoxious rehash of virtually every kid’s movie cliche stuffed into an excruciating 90 minutes. 

There’s a little boy named Harold, and he’s not like anyone you know. In his world, he has a purple crayon, and anything he creates becomes real. Guiding Harold is the voice of the old man (Alfred Molina). But when Harold (Zachary Levi) grows up and the voice of the old man disappears, Harold travels to the real world with his animal friends Moose (Lil Rel Howery) and Porcupine (Tanya Reynolds) to find him. After crashing into our three-dimensional world of color and people, Harold befriends Terry (Zooey Deschanel) and her imaginative son Mel (Benjamin Bottani) to help him. Predictable hijinks ensue. 

Now If you haven’t noticed, I did not like this movie. I tried. I tried many times in fact. After three attempts at starting it, stopping it, and giving it another go, I finally made it through. I didn’t like it. Not one little bit. It’s the movie that would inspire me to do nothing on a rainy day but stare out the window and sit, sit, sit. And I say this because I love Crocket Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon. Among the litany of children’s lit I was exposed to, it was by far my favorite. It’s a beautifully told, simple story of one child’s capacity for infinite imagination. It’s the book that taught me to read and inspired me to expand my horizons and look for more great books to devour. This film only inspired me to turn it off… which I did, twice, before I finally gutted it out to the finish.

Harold and the Purple Crayon the movie is Zachary Levi stuck in full Shazam mode without the benefit of a better teenage actor to ground the antics and none of the charm. The film starts wonderfully with a simple animated prologue explaining the world Harold comes from. That lasts only about two minutes before it goes wall-to-wall noise as animated grownup Harold expands his world. Then he becomes a real live grown-up man/boy and the film has become a hopped-up sugar-fueled tribute to ADHD. Moments of pathos and understanding between our characters and the mystery of life pop up here and there, but never enough to ground the adventure into anything meaningful before it’s interrupted by another hyperactive antic. Even the otherwise capable Zooey Deschanel flounders as she appears to be just like the rest of us and trying her best to get through it so we can all move on to something better. 

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray 
Harold and the Purple Crayon invades the real world of Blu-ray home video from Sony in a single-disc Blu-ray + Digital release. The film is pressed on a Region Free BD-50 disc, but only uses about 28 gigs of that leaving a lot of leftover real estate. The disc is housed in a standard case and loads to a static image main menu with standard navigation options. 

Avoiding the leap to 4K, Harold and the Purple Crayon is content to live life on Physical Media with a respectable 1.85:1 1080p transfer. Given the visual flair of the film, it looks quite nice in HD on disc. Details are sharp, facial features, costumes, and some of the better CGI effects look great. I particularly liked the detail of Harold's crayon drawing on the screen and the details of the inconsistent rough-around-the-edges look of fresh crayon wax on paper. Colors are bright and bold with lovely primaries and healthy skin tones. Black levels are nice and inky and the image maintains a nice sense of depth and dimension.

On the audio front, the film enjoys a very nice DTS-HD MA 5.1 track. It’s a very impressive wall-to-wall surround experience. Considering all the visual antics in play, that shouldn’t be too surprising. Dialog is clear without issue, even during the wage of big visual effects shenanigans. Most of the mix keeps to the Front/Center channels while the surrounds play up the big effects and antics with plenty of imaging. All around a great mix for a kid’s flick like this one. 

Bonus features aren’t all that much to speak of. There’s a fun “how to draw” segment that might appeal to some of the kiddos out there, but there’s nothing really in-depth or informative about the making of the film. Mostly simply fluff.

• How to Draw Harlold, Porcupine, and Moose (HD 5:43)
• “Colors” Sing-Along (HD 1:33)
• How Do You Spell Imagination (HD 1:54)
• Deleted & Extended Scenes (HD 6:47)

I didn’t like Harold and the Purple Crayon. And I wanted to. That book bears the weight of inspiring the imagination of generations of kids. It was brilliant in its simplicity, a message that’s completely lost by this garish over-the-top reworking. As a father, my litmus test for how well a film is working is how long my 4-year-old will stick with it and he bounced before the animated opening was over. But, as much as I did not like this film, it has a solid Blu-ray disc for those who do want to add it to their collections. The video transfer and audio is solid. Bonus features aren’t much to speak of but the “how-to-draw” is a fun piece. If you’re a fan or your kid loves this one it’s a disc to check out. But if you didn’t have an interest in it before now, there’s little here worth the time. At best, Worth A Look