In 1995 a fledgling animation studio teamed up with Disney and released the ground breaking fully CGI animated feature length film Toy Story. The animation, amazing at the time, has aged a little but still has a lot of charm and character to it. In the nearly thirty years since its release huge leaps and strides have been made in the art form. But with that comes the ease to create CGi animation easier and cheaper without the strive for quality. This cheaper looking CGI would find its place heavily in preschool aimed animated television shows like The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius, and The Garfield Show. But this was not just relegated to television. It also permeated quickly produced direct to video movies for young, less discerning viewers, kids who didn’t care if the movie looked cheap so long as it was bright and colorful and kept their attention for a short while. One such film of this ilk is 2014’s The Hero of Color City, a film about Crayons.
The story of The Hero of Color City is as juvenile as the animation. It’s also a mishmash of Toy Story, The Lego Movie and a handful of other similar films. Ben (E.G. Daily) is a little boy who likes to draw. But whenever he goes to bed any pictures he doesn’t complete end up getting forgotten, just sketches without any color. The crayons come to life and return into their box which is a type of portal into their home, Color City. On one such night, two incomplete drawings, a king and a gnat, follow the crayons into the city wanting nothing more than to be colored. Misunderstandings ensue and the drawings end up building a dam over the colorful waterfall leading all the colors in the city, crayons included, to start to fade.
A party is created to take out this threat. This party includes Yellow (Christina Ricci), Red (Rosie Perez), Green (Jess Harnell), Blue (Wayne Brady), Black (David Kaye) and White (Jeremy Guskin). Each of these character’s colors also represent their personalities with Yellow being the cowardly one, Black being depressed one, the green one is Irish, complete with plaid, and so on and so forth. The colors set out on a journey to the waterfall to deal with the dam as well as the unfinished drawings and save their world. Along the way Yellow will have to learn to be brave and all of them will need to overcome their personal biases to see the unfinished drawings as individuals and friends, not monsters to be feared.
The message comes across perfectly clear. For a film directed at preschoolers it kinda has to. Anything more sophisticated would go right over the targeted audience’s heads. This is a film intended to teach young children not to judge a book by its cover and that sometimes scary things are actually not that scary if you take the time to understand them. On that level it succeeds. But this film only succeeds on that level. It’s not a family film intended to work for adults, too, although there are some pop culture references most preschoolers wouldn’t get. The most head scratching of these is a purple crayon that is an homage to Jerry Lewis. Who is this for? Jerry Lewis is so far past the cultural zeitgeist that maybe this is for the grandparents putting this on while babysitting. It’s an odd reference, out of date even for the parents of the time.
Don’t expect any degree of sophistication going into a film like this either. By simplifying things for a younger audience it ends up taking character shortcuts. It also makes some very obvious observations. The white crayon feels left out because he is never used. After all, when coloring in a drawing on white paper, how often would you need the white crayon? This character trait is addressed early on just to give White his moment later as well as a post credits stinger for anyone who sits through those credits. His resolution occurs when the crayons come across a group of unfinished drawings while traveling to the waterfall. This group, much like the King and the Gnat, are scary at first but are actually just sad. By helping them get colored it opens an opportunity to reach the waterfall in time as well as make a few friends along the way.
As children’s entertainment this is serviceable. It’s not a painful watch in any way but its entertainment value is limited. The animation is cheap looking and the voice acting isn’t anything special, either, even though several name actors are in the cast. Even Owen Wilson playing the unfinished dragon comes across subdued. Wilson can do good work in animated films but is phoning it in here. Christina Ricci is fine here as well though she is the only one in the cast who has another actress credited to cover her musical number. Tara Strong takes that duty. Ricci is notoriously quoted for saying she cannot sing. Whether she tried and got replaced after the fact or refused to even attempt to sing is not widely known. The song, Color City Song, doesn’t require strong vocals anyway so it can only be assumed Ricci just didn’t want to sing at all.
There is nothing overtly offensive about The Hero of Color City beyond some adolescent fart jokes and only the strictest of parents will be offended by that. This is a movie designed to appeal to just a narrow audience but it does that quite well. Some films try to appeal to everyone and fail to appeal to anyone because of that wide net. By narrowing in that focus it allows for the film to provide its simple message without worrying about how older audiences will handle the simplicity. Unfortunately that also means this film will not be the type of movie the whole family will sit down and watch together. Instead it’ll be relegated to being a digital babysitter while the adults are in the other room paying it no attention. Few adults will find it worth the effort to watch it through. There’s just not enough to it to justify that.
Release Date: October 3, 2014
Running Time: 77 Minutes
Rated G
Starring: Christina Ricci, Sean Astin, Owen Wilson, E.G. Daily, Jessica Capshaw, Rosie Perez, Craig Ferguson, Wayne Brady, Jess Harnell and David Kaye
Directed By: Frank Gladstone
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