Saturday Night Live writer and first time feature film director T. Sean Shannon has managed to somehow make a movie in the spirit of my three least favorite genres – quirky comedies, movies about high school, and quirky comedies about high school – and still pique my interest.
Harold is a movie about a fourteen-year old boy with male pattern baldness. Need I say more? This is not a sequel to Harold and the Purple Crayon, a children’s book about a four-year old boy with male pattern baldness. Spencer Breslin is the eponymous Harold, and from the looks of it does a good job of playing an incredibly awkward teenager even as he himself seems to be avoiding all that post-child actor awkwardness that relegated a young Drew Barrymore to rahab and Haley Joel Osment to driving a Saturn.
The trailer kind of sucks, but I think what could be good about the film – mostly Breslin’s performance – really transcends the crappy music, cheap title effects, and the inclusion of Cuba Gooding Jr.
Ally Sheedy is in there somewhere too, as are SNL vets Chris Parnell, Colin Quinn, Rachel Dratch and Dave Attell. Fred Willard appears in a cameo as “Guy Who Sticks His Finger Up A Kid’s Ass.”