Harold and the Purple Crayon: Barbie, but make it worse.

Although it may seem pedantic to be very demanding with "Harold and the Purple Crayon" considering that its main focus SHOULD be childish, the truth is that it is very painful that a simple idea ends up in a film without any kind of focus, collecting in its footage a bunch of meaningless ideas that seem to want to attract everyone's attention, and as a consequence end up being unable to attract anyone.

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You see, Harold and The Purple Crayon is a 2024 film directed by Carlos Saldanha and starring Zachary Levi, inspired by a book of the same name created by Crockett Johnson, in which we follow the story of Harold, a rather curious boy who has a magic crayon that allows him to bring anything he draws to reality.

The film, on the other hand, seeks to be a mix of sequel and modern meta-narrative deconstruction, as if they had seen Greta Gerwig's Barbie and were desperate to replicate its success without fully understanding what made it successful in the first place.

In this way, Harold and the Purple Crayon works as a comedy where Harold (played by Levi) ends up creating a portal to the real world, thus abandoning the confines of his own book. His purpose? Finding his creator.

And, although it all starts as a typical fish-out-of-water story (with slight touches of magic) little by little things become more tedious, a consequence of Levi's generic performance, a script that doesn't give any member of the cast much to do, and a rather boring and generic direction.

There are a couple of interesting ideas on paper and for younger people it may be entertaining, however, there are certain alternatives with much more artistic value and a much more compelling and attractive message. I would like to highlight the presence of the gorgeous Zooey Deschanel (probably the only decent actress in the entire film) and a couple of special effects that are well done.

We are clearly faced with a film made from mediocrity, blind to its own possibilities and determined to fulfill its purpose with the least amount of creative effort necessary. It is even surprising that it had a theatrical release, considering that it seems that it was born to drown in the extensive catalog of a streaming platform, waiting for some bored family to decide to play it on a Sunday afternoon, to fall asleep after the first 15 minutes.

Score taken from my Letterboxd account.