One of the most popular young children’s books in the US was the late Crockett Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon where the boy could make anything come to life simply by drawing it. It’s a neat idea and is all explained in a fully animated prologue narrated by the ‘old man’ with Harold and his animal sidekicks Moose and Porcupine and as he gets older he draws himself an entry door in to the real world and dives through.
The real world now sees Harold portrayed by Zachery Levi as a kind of wide eyed male ingénue amazed at the world he finds himself in where his magic crayon still works. Having first found himself in a park he attempts to interact with a wary public – hardly surprising because anyone encountering a wide eyed man in a park with his hand in his pocket clutching what he claims to be his purple crayon is likely to be swiftly housed in a police cell. Joining him through his hand drawn portal is Moose who now manifests as in human form as Lil Tel Howery and the pair are almost run over by Terry (Zooey Deschanel) a single widowed mother to Mel (Benjamin Bottani). That the pair claim to be looking for the narrator ‘the old man’ sees Mel take sympathy on them and persuades his mum to put them up for the night in their spare room.
Porcupine, who has been stuck in their animated world, finally follows Harold and Moose into the real world where she too appears in human form as Tanya Reynolds complete with purple mohican. Amazed at her human form and intrigued by not having opposable thumbs with the same sort of bemusement not dissimilar to Brooklyn Beckham she goes about causing mayhem as she attempts to locate her friends but finds that police are now looking for her too. It’s a weakness of the film that it separates her from the other two to no real benefit to the narrative. Instead it’s the introduction of Jemaine Clement as Gary a librarian with literary ambitions with his self penned and unpublished young adults novel with an unpronounceable title that proves the thrust of the plot. Gary is also only too keen to strike up a romance with the wholly disinterested Terry, frustrated that no publisher will take on his unwieldy manuscript. He soon realises that Harold’s purple crayon could be the gateway into creating his books’ fantasy land and hatches a plot to steal the crayon and take Terry along with him.
A live action / animation hybrid would seem ideally suited to a feature film for such source material and there are several moments that work well most notably a kind of ‘draw-off’ battle between Harold and Gary creating weapons and devices to use against each other and had the potential to be something really great along the lines of Looney Tunes road runner cartoons buts its over too quickly. Zachery Levi would seem to be too old for the role of what starts off as an animated teen and Porcupine and Moose are largely superfluous to the whole story. Zooey Deschanel whose quirky on screen charm has never really been successfully capitalized on and she’s now of an age where mum roles are her future. It’s Jemaine Clement as the villain of the piece who is best but again another actor whose rarely had his talents fully utilized as they were in the comedy series ‘Flight of the Conchords’.
That Harold and the Purple Crayon gets a little meta when Harold visits the museum of his creator Crocket Johnson is fine but far less so when the film culminates in what seems to be a full on promotion for his books far less so and feels a little cynical for a film aimed at young children and any sequel should really see the producers going back to the drawing board.
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Here’s the Harold and the Purple Crayon trailer……
