《 Disclaimer: This is barely an April Fools joke. My writing here is 100% genuine. This is actually how I feel about this movie. 》
Words cannot begin to describe my hatred for Harold and the Purple Crayon 2024.
I grew up with the previous iterations of Harold and the Purple Crayon. I barely remember reading the books, but I sure did watch the animated series on HBO Family. Each episode was fun, relaxing, and stimulated my craving for creativity. Without that show, I doubt I'd be the artist I am today.
But even if I had no attachment to those books or its original animated series... This has got to be easily the most lifeless, put-through-the-corporate-ringer, creatively bankrupt movies I had ever seen in my life.
It threw out 90% of anything that could make it even remotely recognizable to the original Harold and the Purple Crayon books, in favor of doing yet another "cartoon character enters the real world" plot that was outdated by an entire *decade.* They aren't even shameless about it because there's plot points ripped off from those movies. Fictional characters coming to terms with the fact that they are, infact, fictional? That's the entire story of the Barbie movie, and The Smurfs briefly touched on that in one scene. The villain wants to exploit the main character's abilities to make money off of them? That's the plot of almost every Alvin and the Chipmunks movies. And if that wasn't enough, they rip off Elf of all movies? To the point that they even have Zoey Deschanel play the obligatory love interest who rediscovers her passion for music?
You would think that a movie all about a character who can will anything into existence through drawing it would actually have some form of creativity, but there is literally none of that here. All Harold does is draw vehicles. Not even fantastical vehicles, just regular vehicles and some tools, and sometimes there's some animals.
There is a kid who talks about having an imaginary friend named Carl, and he draws it and Carl is a dragon creature, and the design is admittedly a good balance of cool, creepy and cute at the same time. The third act showdown finally shows some fucking creativity as Harold and the villain idk his name i dont care are using the crayon to draw things to fight each other. Too fucking bad I saw the idea better executed in SHARKBOY AND LAVAGIRL, AND I'M NOT EVEN JOKING WHEN I SAY THAT MOVIE UTILIZED THE THEMES OF CREATIVITY FAR BETTER THAN THIS. IT WAS A CONFUSING MESS, BUT I CAN TELL THAT NOT A SINGLE THING ABOUT IT WAS COMPROMISED FOR MASS MARKET APPEAL.
I can't even tell you a single thing about the characters personality because there is none. There is only the bare minimum. When all we had to go off of Harold and the Purple Crayon 2024 was the poster, I predicted that they'd go through the most basic trope of the "main white guy, wacky black friend, and girl" trio without any amount of personality to make them charming or interesting. And I was right. Harold is just Zachary Levi, doing his usual "adult man being a kid" schtick. It wasn't funny when he was Shazam, it's even less funny here. The moose is the nervous wreck who goes "erm, did that just happen?" and he sometimes turns into a real moose.
The porcupine barely manages to avoid being a full-blown cliche by not being a love interest for anyone; Instead, she had her own pointless side story where she goes around the city and causes havoc. It goes nowhere. It adds nothing to the plot, other than I guess having it lead to the other characters getting arrested but it goes nowhere because they escape the jail in the matter of a MINUTE. IT DOESN'T FUCKING MEAN ANYTHING.
Do NOT get me started on how they handled Harold finding out he's fictional. He goes to the Crockett Johnson house, and he gets all sad because it turns out he's dead and Harold is sad and all that i dont fucking care. it's a bad attempt at the whole third act sad point and i felt no other emotions other than wanting to burst out laughing at the moose and porcupine Thanos Snapping out of existence because this movie's attempts at a sad moment is far funnier than any joke that they even tried to attempt.
But more importantly....
YOU LEAVE CROCKETT JOHNSON'S NAME OUT OF THIS, YOU STUPID PIECES OF SHIT.
Crockett Johnson wasn't just a children's author. He wasn't even just a super influential children's author. He was a super influential children's author who created cartoons for the New Masses magazine, which was made to promote Marxism across America in association with the Communist Party of America. He was alive during the Great Depression so he knew what it was like to be fucked over by capitalism, especially at such a low point in the already terrible track record of the United States.
So let me ask you this... let me ask this one fucking question.
DO YOU THINK THIS MAN WOULD HAVE WANTED HIS WORK TO BE TAKEN BY SOME GREEDY ASS CORPORATION LIKE COLUMBIA PICTURES, STRIPPING AWAY ANY AND ALL CREATIVITY IT ONCE HAD, AND TACKING ON SOME INFAMOUS CONSERVATIVE PIECE OF SHIT ZACHARY LEVI AS HAROLD HIMSELF.
IS THAT WHAT HE WOULD HAVE WANTED? IS IT?????
I may have technically had a more miserable experience watching Peter Rabbit 2 (which I may touch on later), but no other movie has been at the center of the sheer wrath that I can muster up as Harold and the Purple Crayon. It is such a painful movie experience that you cannot get ANYTHING good out of. It is not an enjoyable movie to sit through, not even in an ironic sense, and whatever good elements it technically has are either plagarized or just done better in other movies. This movie is sheer ASS.
