MOVIE REVIEW – “Hero Of Color City”

If you’ve ever looked at your child’s box of crayons in an Ambien induced haze and wondered what the crayons would be like if they magically came to life, then The Hero of Color City may be the perfect movie for you to watch with your kids. Our story begins as young Ben is being put to bed by his mother after a night of drawing and coloring. When he finally falls asleep, his crayons begin to come to life and take on personalities that correspond to their respective colors and usage. Black is depressed and morose. White feels underappreciated and underused. Red (voiced by Rosie Perez) is sassy and fiery. Yellow (Christina Ricci) is afraid of everything from the inanimate toy sock monkey to the lifeless two-dimensional drawings. You can probably guess what the refried bean crayon does. As they do every night under the direction of the mustachioed cowboy Sheriff Brown, the crayons organize and jump back into their crayon box, which is actually a corridor that leads to a rainbow-slide portal back to Color City: a vibrant, carefree word of full of all the dazzling hues of the spectrum and child-like wonder.The Hero of Color City centers around Yellow, who is left behind in Ben’s messy bedroom by the rest of crayons on this particular night. It is here that she encounters King Scrawl, who cannot speak and only grunts because a mouth was never drawn on his face, and his little insect-dragon sidekick Gnat (Craig Ferguson), who are both colorless, two-dimensional sidekicks who spring into 3D life. Yellow becomes frightened by them–as she is with everything–and scurries into the crayon box to join her friends back in Color City. After a quick stop at Pink’s spa to refresh her color and “get her tip sharpened,” Yellow’s anxieties ease a little and she begins to enjoy Color City. That relaxation quickly comes to an end as Sprawl, who had apparently followed her to Color City, kidnaps her and takes her to the top of a Rainbow Empire State Building, King Kong style, while he fends off attacks by paper airplanes piloted by crayons led by Sheriff Brown. Yellow is eventually rescued by Blue (Wayne Brady) and Green, leaving Sprawl to retreat.

Temporarily thwarted in their effort to gain color, the persistent Sprawl and Gnat shift their attentions to the city’s Rainbow Waterfall, which supplies the lake that is the life force behind all of the crayon’s colors. If the duo succeeds in commandeering the lake, the crayons of Color City will lose all their color and become extinct. When a City Hall meeting is called to ask for volunteers to help thwart Sprawl’s attempts at this, Yellow deliberates whether or not to join the operation. Instead of joining the mission, she decides to just bring supplies for those who are about to embark on the operation, but while taking Blue a “map of scary places” aboard the departing vessel, the boat takes off with her aboard, making her a reluctant voyager. The crew of courageous crayons must stop the giant Sprawl before the young boy, Ben, wakes up, or they will be erased into oblivion. Along the adventure–which features a few colorful songs–each crayon learns that he or she has an importance in the grand color-scheme of things and that Sprawl may not be as bad as he seems. From this film, many valuable life lessons can be drawn–and colored in.