Harold And The Purple Crayon (2024)

It was with a bit of trepidation that this one was put on my screen, it has been such a long time since a nice family friendly simply daft movie has come along that this has to be a fluke. But not this time, happy to say that Harold brings back to us a bit of children’s magic to storytelling l, don’t get me wrong this is no masterpiece but praise where it’s due the makers of this seem to have managed a mix of a food fantasy family story with an underlying meaning of happiness.

The story is, we meet Harold from the start (Zachary Levy) who lives in his 2 dimensional world with his friends the purple moose and a porcupine and they spend their time playing games having adventures with a narrator (Alfred Marino) until one day after Harold has grown up.. the old man simply stops coming by. Harold decides that he wants to find him so tries to use, in Barbie style, to use his magic to pass into the real world to start the hunt.

On entering the world moose and porcupine turn human (probably for ease) and the crayon will still work.

Only the real world isn’t quite what they expect and it turns out using magic here has consequences.

In the real world of course he will need friends as all stories so, enter Mel a young boy recently lost his father looming for his place in the world. With his struggling mother Terry (Zoey Deschenel) they take the trio of travelers in to aid in their search.

In true kids movie style there must be a daddy, and this time it is in the form of an evil minded librarian, who, after failing to sell his really and book sees the crayon as a way out of his rut.

The action on this is slapstick and family fin with only a few jump scares that younger kids may not like.

On the whole this is a very watchable family film, in the vain of Jim Carrie slapstick and enthusiasm. The effects are good and it is addictive.

From what we have seen of the critics they are positive though a few have said the style may be dated. I disagree, this is just the sort of thing we need now, no bias, no political meaning, no agenda just a funny silly story. Give it a go.

4/5