Harold

Plot synopsis:
Harold Reynolds (Spencer Breslin) is a 13-year-old boy with early male pattern baldness. Harold seems to cope all right in his hometown, Douglasburg, until his mom, Maureen (Ally Sheedy), announces that the family is moving to a new house in a new town. Harold panics, because he had somewhat fit in with everyone at his old school, despite his baldness.
When he arrives in his new house, Harold is met by an elderly new neighbor, Maude (Suzanne Shepherd), who assumes Harold is older because of his baldness, and starts flirting with him. Harold starts at his new school, and because he initially wears a hat into class, he is seemingly accepted, especially by a girl, Evelyn (Elizabeth Gillies), whom he briefly flirts with. When the teacher, Ms. Vicki Norris (Rachel Dratch), notices him wearing a hat, he is forced to take it off, thus revealing that he is bald. Instantly he is ostracized by the other students, including Evelyn.
Harold's older sister, Shelley (Stella Maeve), has started High School in the new town as an immensely popular and flirty cheerleader. She meets a boy named Patrick (Robert Gorry) and they quickly start dating, which leads to Patrick assuming that Harold is Shelley's father. Patrick asks Harold to buy some beer for him and his friends, which works multiple times.
Harold is bullied relentlessly by students. One of the few nice people is Cromer Styles (Cuba Gooding Jr.), the school janitor. While in gym class, the bullying rears its ugly head and the Coach (Chris Parnell) joins in. Cromer comes to the rescue when he announces Harold is wanted in the office. That was just a decoy – Cromer and Harold watch TV in the janitor's room.
Harold returns home, angry and upset, and decides to go back to his old home, where everyone liked him. He leaves late at night so that his Mom and sister won't get suspicious. He only makes it as far as a strip bar. Harold thinks that because he looks older, he may pass for legal age, but Cromer is there as well, and he takes Harold home. He gives Harold words of encouragement, and then drops him off at home.
The next day in gym class, Harold is asked to take his shirt off as part of the Skins and Shirts team. He has a big strip of hair on his back, and everyone starts laughing at him. He talks to Cromer, and they decide to pull a prank on the coach, turning off the hot water when the coach is in the shower.
Not wanting to go back to school, Harold buys a few beers for himself, and is followed by Maude, who still thinks that he is much older. When he tells her he is 14, she thinks that means the size of his manhood. When he explains he is only 14 years old, she tells him to come back in a few years.
Patrick and his buddies ask Harold for one more favor: to get them some beer for a party. Harold buys the beer, but is arrested by police, who believe him to be an adult selling beer to minors. They do not believe him when he tells them that he is only fourteen. He is taken to jail and is bailed out by Cromer.
Later that night, Patrick apologizes for what happened, and tells Harold he wants to have sex with Harold's sister. Shelley tells Harold she doesn't really want to have sex, although she likes Patrick. They get Cromer to wait outside the hotel room, When Shelley leaves the room, Maude is sent in her place, and Patrick ends up having sex with her.
There is a go cart race coming up, and some of the bullies put a dent in Harold's cart in order to slow him down, but Cromer repairs the dent. A lady from the crowd shows her breasts to the bullies in order to distract them, enabling Harold to win the race, and, ultimately, the respect of the school.
The movie ends with Harold holding his trophy and the bullies apologizing for teasing him, now wanting to be his friends.

Tags: revenge, humor

Review:
For a Direct-To-Video Comedy, It's Not Bad & Quite Funny.
I frequently am amazed at the amount of unknown movies I see in video stores.
I'm a big movie buff, too (this is my 96th review on this site in 4 years).
At a Blockbuster, for instance, I can be guaranteed that in the New Release section, 60% of the movies are direct to video, and most of them are probably crap.
That is especially true for comedies, particularly the blatant ripoffs of "Van Wilder" or other frat house flicks."Harold" fell into that category.
I picked it up, though, because it had a bunch of famous people in it.
It had Ally Sheedy, the adorable Nikki Blonsky (after "Hairspray"), a number of SNL alum (Rachel Dratch, Chris Parnell, and longtime writer James Downey), and Cuba Gooding, Jr. Now honestly, considering Gooding has starred in some bad, bad comedies since winning his Oscar ("Boat Trip", "Daddy Day Camp"), his role alone didn't give me high hopes for this movie.Fortunately, the movie was better than I thought it would be.
Granted it has a predictable plot line, and has actors who are high school age or older playing junior high kids.
Still, there were parts of this movie that were refreshingly funny, and Gooding was probably the best thing about this film.The film centers around Harold (Spencer Breslin), a 13 year old who is prematurely bald simply because male pattern baldness runs in his family.
Because his hairline has completely receded, and what little hair he has is thinning on top, he looks far older than he actually is.
Somehow he also acts like an old man for reasons the movie doesn't bother to explain.
Harold is comfortable in his own skin at first, and likes his life in his small hometown.His single mother (Sheedy) then gets a job promotion which requires him and his superficial sister Shelly (Stella Maeve, who is actually quite good in her role) to move to a more urbanized community.
While Shelly fits right in at her new high school, Harold gets bullied by other boys and victimized by his gym teacher at his new junior high.
Being prematurely bald doesn't help matters.In typical junior high movie fashion, Harold develops a crush on a Lindsay Lohan lookalike Evelyn (Elizabeth Gillies), falls in with a group of misfits which includes Blonsky, and the misfit girl (Blonsky) develops a crush on Harold that he naturally takes no notice of.
This subplot of the film is definitely cliché, but fortunately, thanks to the clever writing of former SNL writer T.
Sean Shannon, it avoids banal plot points that other junior high angst films fail to do.
For one, the Evelyn girl isn't mean to Harold, or in general.
Plus, Harold's crush on her is realistically misguided.Unfortunately, the rest of the storyline lacks originality.
As soon as you hear about the drag race that coming Sunday, you know there will be a climactic showdown.
The second Harold goes to gym class, you know the gym teacher is going to be mean to him.
In fact, this film bears a striking resemblance to another direct-to-video movie about a junior high misfit: "Lloyd" (2001).
I could cry plagiarism on this one, but "Lloyd" was even more cliché and didn't even reach the level of clever writing this film did.Amazingly, Cuba Gooding, Jr. contributes greatly in saving this film from being as predictable and forgettable.
Gooding plays Cromer, the school custodian who Harold befriends and later counts on when he is in bad situations.
Gooding has some laugh-out-loud hilarious lines, and he is truly genuine in every scene he's in.Perhaps the most confusing character in this film is Harold himself.
Breslin plays him as someone who not only looks and acts old, but who (I guess) wants to be old, judging from his reading the newspaper and religiously watching "Murder, She Wrote".
It didn't say why, though, or how he was ever comfortable with having patchy hair.
I currently have all of my hair, but I still think that if I ever lose it up top, the rest of the hair is going.
It would have been cool if Harold had decided to actually shave his whole head and make that his style, but it doesn't occur to him to do that.
Just as Blonsky let her hair down in "Hairspray", I really wanted Breslin to shave his whole head and really give the hackneyed climax scene the boost it needed.
Ah, missed opportunity.Speaking of Blonsky, I also wish her character was more developed.
Blonsky was adorable and fun in the "Hairspray" musical, and she's equally as magnetic in this movie.
However, it was clear that her character was written so passively as to be a hackneyed teen movie character.
Her character should have had some more clever lines, instead of just being the non-glamorous girl with a crush on the hero.
Blonsky deserves better because she's a great actress.
Hopefully she'll be in other good movies soon.Although Maeve was actually funny as Breslin's sister, Ally Sheedy wasn't given a lot to do here, either.
She's just matter-of-factly a single mom here.
There's a funny outtake where she's sarcastically ranting (in character, I assume) about how great she had it in junior high, a tongue-in-cheek reference to her famous misfit role in "The Breakfast Club".
It would have worked well in the movie not only as a good joke, but also to give the mother a more strongly supportive role.Overall, though, there were some very funny, laugh out loud moments in this movie, and Cuba Gooding, Jr. was perhaps the best thing in here.
So far, though, there hasn't been a really funny movie about junior high that simultaneously touches on how painful those years really are.
"Welcome To The Dollhouse" has come the closest so far.
Still, I marginally recommend "Harold" because it is funny and enjoyable to watch..
If you like 1980s teen films (Breakfast club etc..) U will LOVE this film!.
If you like 80s movies, Sixteen Candles, Breakfast Club, etc...
then you'll LOVE this movie.
This movie is an 80s film made in the new millennium.
People that don't like this movie don't understand what the director was trying to do.
He was trying to capture the spirit of the 80s for our time.
He even used Ally Sheedy, one of the classic 80s actresses!!
This movie is just as good as the best 80s teen movies!!!!
I doubt teens now could appreciate it.
They're too busy watching SAW or Gossip Girl.
But for those of you who appreciate the 80s this film is a real treat.
The main actor, Spencer Breslin, is incredibly talented.
It's amazing how convincing he is copying the mannerisms of a 40 year old.
There's few teen actors out there who could pull it off.
Cuba Gooding Jr. is HILARIOUS!
I'm not really a fan of his but in this film he is fantastic.
Don't miss this film!!!.
a real hidden gem.............
all i can say is wow what a great surprise this movie was,went in not expecting much but this was a total shock went far in my ideas of comedy to take a small time film and create a funny simple and creative movie about a 13 year old boy with baldness................this years Napoleon dynamite some great one liners and shock and horror moments to make anybody cringe with laughter......................going by the voting so far i bear to think what comedy people like because most will like this movie,its cool funny and has a good story,simple as it is,sometimes a simple story with predictable scenes is what people want and this takes those and proves a right treat,it will really depend on your mood watching this.awesome one liners too boot.......
Hilarious indie comedy.
"Harold" provides more laughs per minute than any comedy in recent memory.The premise of Greg Fields' and director T.
Sean Shannon's script provides us with a veritable gold mine of sparkling comedy nuggets.
13-year-old Harold has virtually nothing in the world going for him - for not only is he an eternally put-upon, socially awkward nerd, but his early-onset male-pattern-baldness makes people assume he's a middle-age man.
This, of course, leads to a great deal of humiliation and social rejection for the kid - but countless moments of awkward-situation and mistaken-identity hilarity for the audience.
But Harold does have at least two things in his favor: a rapier wit that allows him to hold his own in any situation – no matter how surrealistic and bizarre in nature - and a mature enough understanding of how the world actually works to help him navigate through life's rough waters and emerge a stronger person in the end (at times he seems like Woody Allen as we imagine he might have been right at the onset of puberty).
And it's that spirit of knowing optimism, more than anything else, that purges "Harold" of cruelty and makes us laugh WITH rather than AT the character.I don't know where these guys Fields and Shannon came from, but their script for this film is a gem of originality, tonal balance and understated satire.
In addition, the movie is blessed with an array of outstanding performances, starting with Spenser Breslin, who makes of Harold a thoroughly likable and wholly relatable figure.
Ditto for the rest of the cast, which includes Ally Sheedy, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Rachel Dratch, Chris Parnell, Stella Maeve, Suzanne Shepherd, Elizabeth Gilles and Robert Gorry.Together they've made an endearing, hilarious comedy that grinds the over-priced and overpaid Hollywood big boys of the business into the dust..
Made me feel good about being bald.
T.Sean Shannon has called upon his friends (and family) and created a unique, funny film.
Modeled after the typical high-school, new-kid, nerd plot, this movie has enough funny parts to make me rate it a 9.
If I had to describe it, I would say "Sixteen-Candles" meets "Mr Woodcock" would be a good-approximation.Filled with bit-parts by SNL players, as well as comic veterans and Oscar-winners(!), Harold keeps you guessing at a good pace all while making you giggle/laugh/broo-hah-hah in many places.I think it must have been a nice departure for the seasoned actors to play the comedian role...
the newbies held their own alongside.
I predict that several of the young actors will go on to further roles.
I am not sure about T.Sean's brother, Pat, though.
His cameo is as short as he is bald (and now, old)!
:)Well worth the rental/download!.
It could've worked.
I really don't know where to start, but here it goes:THE GOOD: Cuba Gooding Jr. What else can I say; this man has had several Oscar nominations.
So far in his life, he has only won ONE.
With that said, this should have been his next.THE BAD: EVERYTHING ELSE!
I mean, the premise alone is, not only brilliant, but unique: An adolescent boy with a rare condition that causes baldness, how in the hell couldn't they have made that work!?I'll tell you how, just let me list down every adolescent movie clique you can think of:It starts out with the protagonist having a regular everyday life, up until his (or her) parent tells the whole family that they have to move.Upon arriving to the new place, the protagonist has a real difficult time fitting in.
More so, he (or she) is picked on just for being "different".He (or she) eventually falls for an attractive, yet completely shallow, girl (or guy) and tries hard in so many ways to get her (or his attention).At the end of the climax, he (or she) later realizes that he (or she) never needed affection from her (or him) to begin with.this whole movie is filled with nothing but one bad joke after another: each one relies on either pedophilia, awkwardness, or bad taste.THE ACTING: What else can I say other than the fact that it is god- awful.
I mean, as bad as everyone else is in this, they are nowhere near as horrendous as Spencer Breslin.
He's proved that, since The Santa Clause 2, he cannot act to save his life.All in all, (with the exception of CGJr.) there is no real effort put into this train wreck whatsoever, so don't waste your time on it.