Harold and The Purple Crayon - Zachary Levi's movie is charming, yet narratively lazy (By Ajay Kumar)

 Sometimes, movies can really hit you with deep messages and move you in certain ways emotionally. Harold and the Purple Crayon is one of these films, but it doesn’t really cater to the right audience and is let down by many unfulfilling aspects.

Harold and the Purple Crayon is charming, yet lazy at the same time. 

It’s always great when a kids’ movie makes the adults chuckle, whether it’s intentional or not. Though, a good kids’ film will have elements that cater to all age demographics. Harold and the Purple Crayon unfortunately suffers from an imbalance of comedy and heart, which weighs down the impact of deep messages. At times, this movie that is meant to have a target audience of kids often targets the adults a bit too much, and at other times, the kids too—creating a vibe that might not cater to the whole family.

What also didn’t help this was the fact that this movie made Harold a fully grown adult in the real world. This also altered the impact of its message about children making the world exactly how they wish through being “creative” and expressing true imaginative freedom. Zachary Levi is a solid actor, but the whole silliness of him playing this character adds some unintentional humour for adults and reviewers like myself to laugh at.

Zachary Levi portrays the titular child 'Harold' in the film.

The plot holes are also laugh-worthy. The whole narrative could have been solved in minutes if the characters used logic, but of course, no kids’ film can even be bothered to do that because they’re just made for the sake of money.

Characters, while portraying good messages, all lack depth apart from the titular boy (or should I say, man) himself. His arc is somewhat predictable, but it helps to craft the message of the film, which is the only thing to appreciate about this film. Every other narrative beat is somewhat predictable to a point—and its originality is swept away because Barbie and other movies have already tried the crossover from their franchise-set lands to the real world. This makes the movie funnier for someone like myself or an adult, but the actual jokes and charm are absent from this film and consequently won’t keep kids entertained.

Lil Rel Howrey brings some good laughs, but its not enough to save the film.

The CGI is very off-putting. It doesn’t allow you to immerse yourself into Harold’s imagination. Some other technical problems such as the set design could’ve used some work also.

Ultimately, Harold and the Purple Crayon has promising elements—a good message, a fairly decent concept, and the freedom to create an unpredictable story because of it. Though, it fails because of certain narrative choices made in creating a movie that both kids and adults can love collectively without laughing and stumbling over some of its pretty obvious and unbearable flaws.