Harold and the Purple Crayon

Oops, how did this get in my horror movie week? Sorry, guys, this must be a mistake, let me... wait... this was intentional? Oh, dear, this movie was... certainly horrific. A movie focused on Zachary Levi, hit Shazam actor and information peddler, as a child at heart being creeped on by a predator played by Jemaine Clement? WHAT WERE THESE WRITERS THINKING?!?!?!?! Let's get into Harold.

PLOT: Harold.

There is no plot. It only contains a sexual predator attempting to become his own main character from a bad fantasy novel in a movie that happens to start Harold from the hit kid's book Harold and the Purple Crayon. It's not interesting or deep or even emotional, it just exists. There's nothing here to look at.

CHARACTERS: And.

Whomever decided to make Jemaine Clement a potential predator preying on pretty people who previously prates at preteens deserves to be canned. This movie has no character growth, it is the Smurfs of character change. Nothing here is remotely interesting and the kid is just bleh. It's called work harder on your scripts, people. They wasted ALFRED MOLINA, Doc Ock or bandit from Raiders depending on your age, on a narration. That tells you how much this movie cares about characters. It also wastes Zooey Deschanel and Jemaine Clement fully. Like I said, just bad awful characters with no depth or even emotion behind "happy" or "sad" or "grumpy".

SHOTS: The.

Animation would've done this movie so much better. But, noooooo. It features ugly live-action things because no baby cartoon movie can be taken seriously. We can't take Zachary Levi seriously at all as a cartoon, not even if he were a dashing rogue seeking riches... wait, yes we CAN. He did it in Tangled. So, of all choices, why was this a live-action movie instead of maybe a 2D/3D mix? Baffling to me that, of all mediums to make a boy who can draw anything to life with his crayon, we decided live-action ugliness. Thanks, Sony.

SOUND: Purple.

Whatever. It was not offensive. Nothing stood out.

WRITING: Crayon.

The writing is by far the worst part. Bad jokes, I can handle. But being boring? That's the biggest sin of all. Don't make kid's movies boring. I hate feeling like the Children's Theater Critic (also Alfred Molina), but the decisions here are just abysmal and the pacing hurts because of bad timing, bad jokes, and insane dialogue about a fantasy writer's strange predilections. It's just a badly written movie.

LITTLE THINGS: The animated segment, I guess.

There's an animated segment at the beginning that should've just been the whole movie. It's pretty classic hand-drawn animation and it's very charming and creative. Too bad they decide after 15 minutes to cut it because "Zachary Levi, big star and such". Give me a break.

VERDICT: Yeah. No.

You are better off watching any animated movie at home. Heck, save your money and go watch Wallace and Gromit when that comes out. Or, just wait for The Wild Robot. Either movie will have 2000% more charm than anything in this movie. So, yeah, not even a contest, this was one of the worst movies of the year. The only reason it's not in the Top 5 yet is because it has a nicely animated segment and a few jokes stand out. Harold and the Purple Crayon definitely needed more colors, because all I say is a blank canvas of very little originality.

SCORE: 2/10, see me after class.