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‘Harold and the Purple Crayon’ Review: They Should Have Gone Back to the Drawing Board
Crockett Johnson's beloved 1955 storybook becomes one more adaptation of a children's classic that swaps in formula for magic.
As for the story, Fleming’s debonair absurdist saga of gangsters and hair’s-breadth escapes was replaced by a broad fairy tale featuring a kidnapper called the Child Catcher. Over the course of the movie, he draws a spare tire, a two-seater bike, pies and ice cream, skateboards and roller skates, a gleaming propeller plane, a giant lock and wrecking ball (to escape a prison), a griffin, and a spider-fly with vicious teeth. The director, Carlos Saldanha, a veteran of animation (“Rio,” the “Ice Age” films), stages the dramatic arcs in David Guion and Michael Handelman’s screenplay as if they were made of pasteboard.
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