It’s sad when a moderately funny film like Harold only gets a limited release when terribly unfunny films like Meet The Spartans gets just over twenty-six hundred screens.  I understand that some films may be hard to sell to the public but it sure is irritating when movies EVERYONE knows is going to be terrible gets a wide release.  Harold may not be the best comedy but it’s sure better than most comedies that get wide releases; I was pleasantly surprised.

Harold stars Spencer Breslisn, Ally Sheedy, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Nikki Blonsky.  Thanks to City Lights Media the synopsis follows: “As a young teenager suffering from really early male-pattern baldness,
Harold has never had it easy. Despite the efforts of his scattered mother — and aggravated by his beauty queen-mean sister — life is a trial for Harold. And now his teen angst is topping out: He’s facing his first day at a new high school in a new town. He’s not only going to be the ‘new kid,’ but the ‘new weird bald kid’.”

A thirteen year old who is obscenely bald really could translate into a funny movie and a good portion of it is.  The best thing I received out of Harold was the performance of Spencer Breslin as the title character.  If he wasn’t a teenager he would really pass as a mid-aged man.  Yea, that’s the point of his character but he’s so convincing and his comedic timing was very on target for most of the film.  The way he acts towards children younger than him or even older teenagers who want to take his crazy sister out on dates was the act of a miserable old depressed man.  Even the way Breslin walked and dress was full of mid-aged stereotypes that made his character so funny.  His interaction with his sexually deprived senior citizen neighbor Maude (Suzanne Shepherd) makes for funny scenes most notably when she was chasing him throughout the streets in town because she “wanted to talk to him” if you can understand what about.  A sequence which is also funny for me is a scene where Harold explains what different methods he’s tried to cover his baldness, saying that one of them was “the Shatner” and those of us who are Star Trek fans, know what kind of wig styles the Shat has had over the years.

Overall the entire head line cast of Cuba Gooding Jr., Nikki Blonsky and Ally Sheedy was very solid.  Sheedy of course was in the original WarGames, a film where I just reviewed it’s disappointing sequel not to long ago.  The issue with Cuba Gooding Jr., who plays Harold’s janitor friend Cromer, is one that’s been discussed for a long time now.  Gooding Jr. is a really fantastic actor and he has an Oscar to prove it but what the hell happened to his career.  Does he have a bad agent or just a bad eye for movies or has he become a hack and just works for pay checks?  All of those can be discussed somewhere else but they’re good questions.  All that said, Gooding Jr. was great!  I thought he could have had a little more comedy with the lines he was given but overall I say he was just fine.  That goes with most of the supporting cast as well.  A lot of the actors and actresses do a fine job with what they were given but some of them were either miscast or just plain had nothing to go on.  Also, Fred Willard makes a funny cameo; Willard just appeared in Wall-E.

The single biggest problem I have with Harold is a complete disaster of a story line.  Harold starts of with a purpose but during the course of the film it completely gets thrown all over the place with extra plots that shouldn’t even have been written.  Harold is only 100 minutes which is fine but even so, it probably could have use either a good trim or better editing.  The whole thing with the go-cart race as a plot motivation was just really stupid and it didn’t even have a lot to do with the film overall.  Mention of it comes and goes throughout the film until the race begins.  Also the story has the biggest cliche in high school movies; The weirdo has the hots for the girl, but also has to deal with the school bully.  Seriously… how many times was that done in movies?  Not only did the kid who played the bully not do a very good job… there is also another bully to work on, the punk that’s trying to sleep with Harolds sister.  I will say in defense of Harolds sister Shelly (Stella Maeve) story, it ended really really funny even if a little predictable.  In either case both bully’s were under used characters who probably would have had more screen time if there was only one to deal with.  That brings up another problem, almost all of the supporting characters were so under used that some of them shouldn’t have even been in the picture for example the group of weirdos who welcome Harold into their group and the people Harold met at the Strip Club.  To sum up Harold, it’s a predictable movie that lacks charm.  All of these problems really brought down what I would have rated Harold.

Although Harold has great acting with some great comedy here and there, it really falls apart with the story as a whole.  If Harold concentrated on one specific thing for the title character with one or two subplots, it would have been better in my book.  However, it is what it is and I have to give Harold an over all score of 6 out of 10.  The effort for a good movie was there but in the end, no cigar.

-Phil