Crockett Johnson’s much loved 1950s children’s books have been adapted several times before, though British viewers may be more familiar with CBBC’s Su Pollard-voiced equivalent, Penny Crayon. This time round, it’s a live-action film with animated elements, starring Zachary Levi as an adult version of the onesie-wearing, magic crayon-wielding Harold.
The film begins in cartoon world, where, in a moment of existential curiosity, animated Harold draws a door marked “Real World”, and before you can say “Hey, isn’t this the plot of the Barbie movie?”, he’s tumbling through it, with his talking animal pals close behind. They crash-land into the lives of Mel (Benjamin Bottani) and his overworked mum (Zooey Deschanel, essentially reprising her Elf role, only now with added weariness and wrinkles).
Since Levi is the single-use plastic of screen performers – flat, shiny, desperately unfashionable – it’s left to Jemaine Clement to provide the story’s charismatic core as Gary, the villainous failed fantasy novelist with a thing for Mel’s mum.
There’s also a hastily sketched moral here about the power of imagination or something, but perhaps the film is more usefully read as a caution against wasteful consumerism in the age of Amazon deliveries. When you can summon an item as soon as think of it, what value does anything have?
