The “Harold and the Purple Crayon” movie poster. Photo courtesy of IMDB
“Harold and the Purple Crayon”, starring Zachari Levi, comes out tomorrow to international audiences. The movie shares the name of the beloved children’s book it’s based off of, which was written nearly seventy years ago, and features a now grown up Harold who adventures into the real world, where hijinks ensue. But will this movie be able to live up to the hype of its origin?
Some San Luis Obispo High School students fear the worst from this movie, thinking it’ll be nothing more than a way for the studio to make a quick buck.
“I grew up with [Harold and the Purple Crayon]. The story shaped my formative years and the way they absolutely crap on [the plot] in order to make it into a stereotypical cash grab is idiotic.” says junior Mason Cortez.
The movie has not been without production issues too. The movie was originally set to come out in January of 2023, and was then pushed back to June of that year, before finally setting the release date to tomorrow. However, some of the more optimistic SLOHS students believe this delay allowed the studio to work on the quality of the movie, making it a genuinely enjoyable film.
“I think it’s a 50/50 chance [if the movie is good or not]. We’ve seen a direction where there’s a lot of good adaptations starting to come out recently. We’ve also seen a direction where there’s a lot of bad ones…it depends on how much studio interference there is and on how much it’s just an attempt to make money.” says junior Mateus Iscold.
However, there’s still one more issue with the movie that sends many confident students into skepticism. The movie is in live action.
“If they choose to do it live action, I think it’ll be hard to pull off and make it good, especially since the entire plot [of the book] is about drawing. That doesn’t really happen in the real world. You can’t just draw stuff and make it appear.” says junior Grant Laity.
The “Harold and the Purple Crayon” movie releasing soon definitely has mixed feelings surrounding it. Whether it’s going to be a spectacular flick or a pathetic flop is a question that can only be answered tomorrow.
