Everything Harold draws becomes reality.
When his creator, the faceless narrator of his world whom Harold affectionately calls Old Man, first made him, Harold was just a 2-D tot with a purple crayon—one that he used to build the world around him.
Decades later, Harold’s once-white world is now a purple wonderland, one that he explores and creates with his two best friends, Moose and Porcupine. But all that creation makes Harold ask Old Man a question far deeper than their usual banter.
“Why did you draw me?” Harold asks.
He doesn’t get a response. But the question, like everything he draws, remains in his world. It’s why Harold can’t help but scrawl a door with the words “Real World” on it—hoping he might be able to meet his creator in person.
Then Harold opens the door and gets transported into our world— Providence, Rhode Island, to be precise—along with Moose and Porcupine. Mysteriously, they arrive in the real world in human form, a transformation apparently caused by the portal.
And—sure enough—there he is: the Old Man!
One smack of a cane later, and Harold realizes that there are, in fact, a lot of elderly men in the real world. This search may take longer than Harold first thought.
Ah, but no matter. With Harold’s trusty purple crayon, he conjures up bikes, planes and all manner of items he thinks will help him find his Old Man as quickly as possible.
But as Harold draws up whatever he pleases, he also draws a lot of attention—including the attention of people who’d prefer to use his potent purple crayon for their own nefarious purposes …
The movie’s central theme deals with creation—namely, how we can use our imaginations to create or do things that will cause positive life changes for others. And even though we may not have magical purple crayons of our own, we can still impact others in our own ways, the movie suggests. To that end, we’re also cautioned that “we leave our mark in the lives we change,” and it’s up to us to make those marks positive rather than negative. On a similar note, when someone begins to use the crayon for villainous purposes, Harold argues that the crayon’s power is meant to be used for good, not evil.
Two people whom Harold’s actions influence are a mother and son, Terry and Mel. The two of them struggle with the loss of their husband and father, respectively. In particular, Terry stopped being happy after he passed away. She gave up her passion for playing piano, and she took a job she dislikes in order to provide for Mel. However, Harold convinces Terry to keep honing her talent on a public piano, garnering a large audience and reinvigorating Terry’s confidence in herself.
Harold, Moose and Porcupine are well meaning, but their ignorance of the real world causes unintentional havoc around the city. And with no knowledge that Harold and friends are anything more than a trio of crazy people, Terry’s initial pursuit to protect Mel from who she sees as potentially dangerous people is admirable.
There’s a lot that could be said about the movie’s theological framework, which runs far deeper than a mere purple crayon. The central plot ultimately revolves around a very spiritual view of the act of creation—including some themes that Christian parents may be able to use to pivot into conversations about Christian theology.
Harold longs to meet his creator in person, actively seeking him out when he realizes he can travel to the real world. More specifically, he wonders why his creator made him in the first place—an answer we eventually discover at the end of the film (and described in our spoiler-warning section below).
The crayon, too, comes with interesting spiritual elements. Some describe the crayon as magical, and one says that it’s made of “pure imagination.” However, Moose quips that it’s actually “more of a science.” Still, Harold discovers that the crayon only works so long as he has faith in its power to create—losing faith even causes any previous scribbles to fade away into purple dust. Parents may consider using this aspect of the film to talk with their children about having faith despite fears and difficulties.
The crayon can bring its sketched creatures to life, and one man alludes to using the crayon to make a human. Someone becomes infused with magical power. Women practice yoga. Someone misquotes Matthew 16:18, stating “Upon this rock, I shall erect my kingdom.”
[Spoiler Warning] Harold panics when he eventually learns that the man who created him, the real-life Crockett Johnson, passed on some time ago, causing him to have a crisis of faith. He’s upset that he’ll never get to meet his maker nor will his questions about his purpose in life be answered. However, Harold eventually reads a letter left to him by Johnson which tells him that his purpose is to inspire others to use their imaginations to make their own lives what they want them to be. Life, Johnson writes, isn’t “just what happens to you—it’s something you create.”
We see or hear a few suggestive double entendres: a man brags that his crayon is bigger than that of another man, for instance. When Harold references spending the night in Terry’s guest bedroom, one man reacts with a look of surprise. The man, Gary, has an obsessive and unhealthy crush on Terry.
In a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, a pride flag can be seen hanging off the balcony of an apartment in the background.
A fantasy character wears an outfit that reveals a bit of thigh. Gary performs a reading of his fantasy book, in which he describes his main character’s muscular abs, pectorals and nipples.
Elderly men call a phone number in the hope that they can begin a relationship with a woman. One says, “I can be your old man if you’ll be my old lady.” Mel jokes that a man is touching his imaginary friend’s rear end. Someone describes, in poetic language, being intoxicated by someone’s beauty. Rose petals on the ground allude to a romantic evening.
Characters narrowly dodge various deadly attacks, including boulders launched by catapults as well as lightning blasts. While animated, Moose falls from a great height and smashes into the ground, though a quick sketch with the crayon fixes his broken antlers.
A bully takes an elbow to the face, causing a nosebleed. Harold shows a bleeding cut on his finger to the camera. A woman gets forcefully knocked out of a room by a beast, and another woman gets tackled by a pursuing female detective. Harold and Moose are hit by a car (but are uninjured), and Harold gets smacked in the thigh with a cane. Another man slams Harold to the grass.
God’s name is used in vain twice. People are called “idiots” and “morons.” Someone throws out angry words in a fantasy language, and those exclamations certainly don’t sound like blessings.
A glass of wine rests on a kitchen island.
A woman breaks into a home. Inmates break out of prison. A boy jokes about defecation. One crayon creation, a large tarantula with the wings of a fly, attempts to bite people with its fangs and may be frightening to young or sensitive viewers. A child skips part of a school day. Bullies threaten a boy.
At the core of this story, Crockett Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon is about the many ways Harold uses his imagination to create his world, seemingly from scratch. And Carlos Saldanha’s live-action depiction of that story throws a little existential crisis in the mix.
OK, it’s not that dramatic. But I certainly didn’t expect to see a grown-up version of Harold longing to meet his creator to ask what the meaning of his life is.
If Harold wasn’t a comedy intended for children, it could have gone even deeper into those very spiritual themes. Instead, like the first scribble on paper, it brushes the broad strokes to the beginning of a spiritual conversation that families will have to use their own imaginations to complete.
And “broad strokes” may be a good way to describe some of the other elements of this film, too: violent content can get dangerous but never results in anything more than little bit of blood. And while adults will pick up on the double entendre present, they’ll probably go over a child’s head. (A pride flag briefly glimpsed in the background should also be noted again here, too, an image that is gone as soon as it appears.) So while some minor content issues pop up and should be noted, there’s little here that feels truly objectionable.
Ultimately, Harold and the Purple Crayon is a fun, if slightly strange, story. Its positive messages may resonate well with families. And the story’s spiritual undercurrents could provide Christian parents with an easy opportunity to talk with their children about finding our Creator, too.
Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”
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