‘Harold And The Purple Crayon’ Review: Zachary Levi And Jemaine Clement Face Off In A Thoughtful Family-Friendly Fantasy
deadline.comBy itself, the opening ten-minute salvo of Harold and the Purple Crayon — Carlos Saldanha’s live-action feature debut — is a thing of rare beauty, a near-perfect standalone preface that effortlessly summarizes Crockett Johnson’s 1955 picture book.
Neatly capturing the quirky simplicity of the original illustrations but adding a kinetic energy worthy of the postwar boogie-doodles of animator Norman McLaren, it’s a thoughtful overture to a refreshingly straightforward family film, one that runs with the concept of Johnson’s story but doesn’t try to fluff it up with excess sentiment or any similarly distracting romantic subplots.
When we meet him, Harold is a cartoon boy with a purple crayon who can draw anything he wants, including his two best friends: Moose (a moose) and Porcupine (a porcupine).
Together, they live in a 2D world that grows bigger as Harold becomes an adult. Finally, Harold becomes fascinated by the concept of his creation, which causes him to engage with The Narrator (voiced by Alfred Molina), who lives in The Real World, where things are “a bit more colorful and a lot more complicated”.
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