91 min | PG | August 2, 2024 | Sony/Columbia Pictures
A beloved children’s book gets the live-action treatment nobody wanted. Zachary Levi draws things with a purple crayon. The magic of the source material evaporates on contact.
Harold is a drawn character who lives inside the pages of his picture book. He draws himself into the real world with his purple crayon. Everything he draws becomes real. He is wide-eyed and innocent and must navigate a world he does not understand. The 1955 picture book by Crockett Johnson is a masterpiece of simplicity. A child draws his world into existence with a crayon and the sparse illustrations let the reader’s imagination do the work. The film replaces that imagination with CGI and Zachary Levi mugging for the camera.
Zachary Levi plays Harold as an adult man-child with the same manic energy he brought to Shazam. The approach might work for a superhero comedy. It does not work for a character whose defining quality is gentle wonder. Levi is trying too hard in a role that requires effortlessness. Lil Rel Howery plays a library employee who becomes Harold’s guide to the real world. Zooey Deschanel plays a librarian. Jemaine Clement voices the villain Moose. The cast is capable. The material gives them nothing.
Carlos Saldanha directed Ice Age and Rio in animation. His live-action debut struggles with the integration of drawn and real elements. The CGI crayon drawings look like what they are. Digital effects imposed on physical spaces. The original book’s power came from the blank white page and the single purple line. The film fills every frame with color and noise and loses the essence of what made Harold special in the first place.
Children’s book adaptations work when they expand the source material’s world without betraying its spirit. The Cat in the Hat failed at this. The Lorax failed at this. Harold and the Purple Crayon fails at this. The book is four dozen pages of a child drawing a walk and going to bed. The film turns that into a fish-out-of-water comedy with a villain and a chase and a lesson about believing in yourself. The crayon deserved better.