As a child, I wasn’t a fan of Harold and the Purple Crayon. I was a stan for The Monster at the End of This Book. Those scaredy-cat “Crayolas” had to have a magic crayon for their imagination. “Book Monsters” just needed that monster at the end of the book. I laugh at their fandom. I spit in their general direction! I would never attend Purple Con!

Yes, there is a Harold and the Purple Crayon film… and it’s not half bad. They’ll boot me out of the fan club for this, but I’ve seen a lot worse family films this year… I’m happy I chuckled along with it.

Since the book isn’t known for its deep lore, the film is about Harold, Moose, and Porcupine leaving the book and entering the real world. They have no idea what reality is like but Harold does have his crayon so he can create anything.

This is an amusing fish-out-of-water story with Zachary Levi (as Harold), Lil Rel Howery as the personified Moose, and a particularly manic Tanya Reynolds as personified porcupine. This may be heretical, but it shares DNA with Elf… Elf being a far superior film, but both have a childlike eyes-wide-open whimsy over the human world.

Zooey Deschanel, surely a total non-Elf-related coincidence, plays the love interest and mom to an impressionable but bullied kid. Jermaine Clemons plays a wannabe fantasy writer who can’t get his book published… but with Harold’s crayon, he can rule the world! Or some such plot the film hand waves around to find an ending.

It also charmingly idolizes the book and its writer… and, sure, I guess fans of Harold and the Purple Crayon will get more out of this than me. The idea the book even had an author somehow surprises me. His name was Crockett Johnson… and now I know.

It’s not a great film and actually is only a passably good one… but it did pass. I enjoyed the cast giving it a lot of energy and got some good chuckles at some of the jokes (some meant to sail right over the heads of kids and get a laugh from the adults).

Score: 75