Harold and the Purple Crayon

Levi capers around with a big, goofy smile and a squeak in his voice -- but there’s more desperation than humour in the performance.

Harold and the Purple Crayon makes the classic Hollywood mistake of taking a story that was lovely because of its concision and simplicity and turns it into a movie that is overly long and complicated for no good reason.

There’s something deeply strange about [Levi's] performance here, grinning and mugging with childlike wonder in a way that can only be read as disingenuous.

'Harold And The Purple Crayon' doesn’t quite provoke the blues that one might expect from such a crass-sounding adaptation, but neither does it paint the town red with its modest ambitions. We’re left mixed, as purple as the crayon.

A film that pays lip service to the importance of creativity without ever displaying a demonstrable shred of it during its seemingly interminable run time.

The film’s effects-first, story-last strategy is a dismal failure. The charming, gentle simplicity of the book, with its childlike art, has been displaced by a mania for digital images and frantic attempts to be funny.

An unimaginative, soulless cash grab that fails to capture the whimsy and magic of its source material.

Harold and the Purple Crayon is a joyous celebration of art and love that is kept from being sublime only by the performance of its lead actor. The supporting cast does wonderful and amusing work that would have been better served by a stronger lead.

Nothing on-screen in Harold can overcome the fact this was just a lousy idea. Director Carlos Saldanha (Rio) has a few lovely flourishes, but the simplicity, timelessness and magic of the source material has stayed stubbornly on the page.

.... while the film is, ultimately, fine, that its target enjoyed it enough to want to revisit it is what matters. Personally, I’d rather go back to the source.