Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.0

Harold and the Purple Crayon Blu-ray Movie Review

Like butter... ahem, I mean grape jelly scraped over too much bread.

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown October 8, 2024

My dearest Hollywood, please stop. Just... stop. It was bad enough when five-minute SNL sketches were being stretched out into two hours. Even worse when it was decided that The LEGO Movie and Barbie weren't excellent, finely crafted anomalies -- the opposite of a cash grab, mind you -- but merely templates for dozens of increasingly lesser films we, your diligent audience, have been subject to. Now it's children's books. Scratch that. Toddler and PreK books. Books that offer barebones stories sometimes as short as 15 pages (with minimal, large print text). Don't get me wrong, they're lovely in print. Some of them absolute childhood classics brimming with nostalgia. But even the best barely survive the adaptive process into a feature length film. Where the Wild Things Are springs to mind as an exception (good God I love that movie), but the vast majority of others have amounted to little more than a blemish on several unforgettable stories' legacies. And now comes Harold and the Purple Crayon, a complete bastardization of one of the most beloved children's books of all time. Written and illustrated by Crockett Johnson and first published in 1955, the original story wasn't a mere 15 pages but rather a rich 64 pages of imagination and adventure. But where does the screen version take lil' Harold? Into adulthood. Into the real world. Into a benign, uninventive, wholly generic movie that joins a shared universe of projects resurrected from development hell only to bomb at the box office, bore older kids and parents, and double down on the industry's bizarre insistence that somewhere, somehow Zachary Levi is an A-lister in waiting, worthy of yet another flick that proves he's anything but.

How very meta.

Inside of his world, a literal children's book, fun-loving Harold (Zachary Levi) can bring anything in his imagination to life simply by drawing it with a magic purple crayon. But when he grows up, he feels a longing and a loneliness; a need for more. In a fit of inspiration, he turns his crayon's power on his own reality, drawing a door that leads off his book’s pages and into our world. The "real" world. But Harold soon finds the grass isn't always... more purple on the other side. And so, with his trusty crayon in tow, still capable of creating whatever he draws, Harold and some newfound friends embark on a quest to save both his world and ours. Directed by Carlos Saldanha and penned by David Guion and Michael Handelman, the live-action hybrid family adventure/comedy also stars Lil Rel Howery, Benjamin Bottani, Jemaine Clement, Tanya Reynolds, Alfred Molina and Zooey Deschanel.

Rather than offer a critical analysis of Harold and the Purple Crayon -- short version: it's dull, dim-witted, poorly scripted, borrows liberally from everything from Hook to Barbie, and features the cringiest of broad performances from Levi -- I had a thought. If Hollywood is so eager to dish out millions to those willing to write cash-in adaptations of classic children's books, why not use this space, right here, to get in on the game? Nab some of those millions? So I offer my dear Hollywood and its studios a series of short, easily digested pitches; possible adaptations of famed children's books ripe for the next big screen outing. Here goes:

• Five Little Monkeys - Jared and his four brothers are five fun-lovin' little monkeys who love nothing more than jumping on their bed. But between a domineering, borderline-Munchausenian mother, a suspicious doctor who seems strangely attracted to her, and a genetic disorder that disrupts their equilibrium and sometimes leaves them reeling from vertigo, Jared and his simian brothers must find a way to jump on their bed without falling down and bumping their heads. (Perhaps this could be set in the Planet of the Apes universe? Just a thought.)

• The Very Hungry Caterpillar - In quaint smalltown, USA, danger lurks. Not from above or beyond, but beneath our very feet. When an already famished caterpillar is bombarded with radiation from a crashed meteorite, he begins to grow. And grow. And grow. It's a bizarre sight but a harmless one. Until, that is, the caterpillar accidentally ingests an innocent farmer while chewing through a field of corn and develops an insatiable lust for blood. His size uncontainable and his hunger endless, the caterpillar turns his sights on an unsuspecting town... and only one man can stop him. (This "one man" can be any hero of any franchise requiring a sequel or reboot. Perhaps Dutch from Predator? Or Delbert McClintock from Arachnophobia? Is John Goodman available?)

• If You Give a Mouse a Cookie - Poor Edgar can't seem to make any friends. He can't even get the other third graders to try one of his mom's homemade cookies. But then fate introduces him to Antoni, not a fellow student, but a tiny immigrant mouse from Italy struggling to find food in America. Fast forward twenty years. Edgar, now a severely introverted grocery store clerk in Chicago, is visited nightly by hundreds, thousands, of mice, all hungry for cookies. Word has spread over the years, and Edgar and Antoni have become quite the sensation! But just as he and his oven are on the verge of being overwhelmed, another chance encounter changes everything. It seems a rat named Remy, famous for a chain of French bistros that have taken the world by storm, has come to town for two weeks, searching for the perfect chefs to manage his latest La Ratatouille franchise location, a dessert-focused bakery ready to open its doors. Written and directed by Brad Bird. A Pixar production.

• Goodnight Moon - Obsessed with a book he read each night to escape the terrors of an abusive childhood and drunken father, Max Harmon, now an adult roaming the alleyways of New York City at night, clad in a burlap rabbit mask, has decided to take matters into his own hands. He whispers a farewell to each victim. Goodnight, pawn shop owner. Goodnight, Times Square tourist. Goodnight, officer Fitzpatrick. Goodnight, stray dog. Goodnight, Wall Street broker. Goodnight, Starbucks barista. But when Max's attention turns toward young Jessica, a seemingly vulnerable college student walking home alone each night, the tables are abruptly turned. Now Max is being hunted by one of the city's most skilled budding serial killers, enraged by none other than Max, who made the mistake of trying to say, "Goodnight, Jessica."

• We're Going on a Bear Hunt - One beautiful Alaskan day, Alan and his five children embark on an adventure that he cheekily calls a bear hunt. And they're not scared! Alan, of course, has no intention of actually searching for a bear, but the idea of a "hunt" excites his sons and daughters as much as it excited him as a boy, when his father told him the same tall tale. However, when a violent storm leaves the family lost deep within the woods, Alan quickly discovers the forest is indeed home to a bear. A grizzly at that. Fighting to protect his children and survive the wilderness, a battered and bewildered Alan and company stumble across a man who spends three months each year living in the wilderness: Charles Morse (Anthony Hopkins), a soft-spoken billionaire who remembers his own deadly encounter with a grizzly years before. Title card: The Edge 2. Obscure sequels are the best sequels.

Harold and the Purple Crayon Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Harold's 1080p/AVC-encoded video transfer is decidedly decent, though not quite what you'd expect from a recent theatrical release. Colors are suitably playful and strong, with solid primaries, naturally-saturated skintones, and deep black levels. Contrast is dialed in nicely too, despite a number of nighttime sequences that are too dark and prone to some pretty noticeable crush. Detail is also good, just not great. Edges are generally crisp and refined (even if a slight softness is prevalent at times), fine textures are adequately resolved, and there isn't much in the way of halos or other artificial anomalies. I did catch two flickers of blocking, blink-and-you'll-miss-em as they were, but otherwise the encoding seems proficient. The film's striking animated sequences are much more appealing to the eye. Sadly, they're few and far between. All in all, Harold and the Purple Crayon's video presentation doesn't disappoint. It just doesn't exactly wow.

Harold and the Purple Crayon Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Likewise, Harold's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track is fine. It doesn't really fumble anything, I'm sure this is exactly how the movie sounded in the theater, but as family-friendly entertainment with bursts of adventure goes, it's fairly bland and uneventful. Dialogue is clear and intelligible, prioritization is spot on, and dynamics are good. LFE output lacks the power we've become accustomed to but still manages to land a few punches (the purple-spewing crew's jet ride being a big one), and rear speaker activity is reasonably involving (though too often light and sparse). Will kids care? Not a lick. Will you? It's kind of a shoulder shrug mix. There's nothing particularly "wrong" here. It just lacks the whiz bang woo of the best family-oriented audio tracks.

Harold and the Purple Crayon Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• How to Draw... (HD, 6 minutes) - A kids' tutorial on drawing Harold, Porcupine and Moose.

• "Colors" Sing Along (HD, 2 minutes) - Another one for the kiddies.

• How Do You Spell Imagination (HD, 2 minutes) - The cast talks directly to their young audience.

• Deleted & Extended Scenes (HD, 7 minutes) - Seven cut bits.

• Sony Previews (HD)

Harold and the Purple Crayon Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I'm not the funniest, cleverest, or most imaginative writer out there, not by a long shot, but I'd honestly rather watch any one of the five pitches-come-to-life in my review (written in fifteen minutes off the top of my head) than spend another minute with desperate dreck like Harold and the Purple Crayon. Will kids enjoy it? The youngest will, but keep in mind, kids have no taste. It's our responsibility to help them fashion good taste. Am I just being a grumpy almost-old man? Probably. But I get angry when Hollywood stomps so carelessly atop one of the most beloved childhood classics of all time, one that comes with very fond memories of reading it to my son so many times more than a decade ago. Ah well, at least Sony's Blu-ray release is a solid one, with good (though not extraordinary) audio and video presentations. The extras are nearly non-existent, but there's a few goodies for the kids. My advice? Skip it.