A 13-year-old kid tries to fit in at his new school, which is complicated by the fact that he suffers from severe male pattern baldness.

CRITIQUE

Harold is an odd little independent movie, a fairly low-budget tale about a 13-year-old boy (played by Spencer Breslin, brother of Abigail) who suffers from male pattern baldness, which makes him look a lot like a 50-year-old Jewish man.  Unfortunately, this is really the one joke here, and co-writer/director T. Sean Shannon really hasn’t found much interesting plot.  Though Harold the character has his likable moments, he just isn’t given much to do here.

Basically, the story here has Harold trying to fit in at the new school, where his look soon gets him outcast to the nerds’ table.  The supposed humor comes from Harold being hassled (and ultimately getting some revenge on his tormenters, with the aid of a janitor played by Cuba Gooding Jr.), as well as from Harold acting like an old man.  But this latter bit never makes much sense here; because we are supposed to believe that Harold is a smart, likable kid who just has this balding problem, his behaving like an old man just feels out of character, a forced attempt to mine laughs that just doesn’t yield much gold.

Otherwise, all the characters here are stereotypes – the annoying sister, the cute girl Harold likes, the jock who picks on him, the chubby girl he realizes at the end he should be with, the overbearing gym teacher.  Shannon struggles with where to go with the plot, finally having it all blandly come down to the least-exciting go cart race ever.  There are a couple of funny little moments here that make one wish this was better, but by the end it just isn’t a very good movie.

THE VIDEO

Given its low budget, Harold generally looks pretty good visually.  There is no info about the aspect ratio.

THE AUDIO

Harold is presented in English 5.1 Dolby Digital.  Dialogue, music and sound effects come through clear.  There are optional Spanish subtitles.

THE EXTRAS

There is a 4-minute piece shot at the Premiere featuring interviews with the cast and crew, as well as a plug for the film from Steve Guttenberg, who isn’t in the movie.

There is a copy of the Trailer for the film.

FINAL THOUGHTS

This wears thin pretty quickly, and it’s hard to imagine its young teen target audience finding much to entertain them here.