Harold (Zachary Levi) has always lived in a magical world and uses his purple crayon to create anything he wants, including friends Moose (Lil Rel Howery) and Porcupine (Tanya Reynolds). But when the narrator (Alfred Molina) disappears, he heads to the real world to find him.
The problem with adapting books written for young children is that there’s usually no real plot to work with — and what there is, by definition, is supposed to last about five minutes before goodnight kisses and bedtime. So adapting this Crockett Johnson classic from 1955 involves taking all sorts of liberties, only a few of which benefit director Carlos Saldanha (the Ice Age films) and his stars.
In fact, this film races through the original book about a boy who can draw anything, makes it come to life in a magical opening scene, and then sets off on his own adventure. Zachary Levi voices adult Harold, who is still hanging out in a purple world with his friends Moose (Lil Rel Howery) and Porcupine (Tanya Reynolds) when the narrator’s (Alfred Molina) voice suddenly goes silent. Harold decides to find it, and draws a door into our world to do so. Cue the theoretically comedic adventures and mayhem, which unfortunately aren’t very funny or exciting. Even worse is the kind of expansive magic that Levi displayed in the first Shazam! It was replaced by endless theft with an edge of despair.
Harold and his friends meet up with single mom Zooey Deschanel and her helpful son Mel (Benjamin Bottani) for some family content and get into some conflict with underutilized Jemaine Clement as a potential librarian/fantasy author, but that’s about it. And in a movie that lives or dies on fantastical fish-out-of-water oddities and magically animated purple things, there’s never enough of either to make you think a crayon could be enchanted, so you end up with a story as anonymous as the Rhode Island setting. Saldanha finds some beautiful moments in the final act to remind us of the power of imagination and creativity, but this is never enough to make up for the lack of laughter. You’ll want to have a purple crayon to scribble over.
It’s well-intentioned and manages some well-judged messages in the end, but Harold’s theft and the antics of his animal companions aren’t nearly as cute as the movie would have you believe.
