The Hero of Color City

PreS-Gr 2—This animated feature provides a thinly veiled lesson on judgment, prejudice, and treating others as you would want to be treated. By day, the multihued crayons are just normal, everyday crayons used by Ben, but at night when the boy's asleep, they use the magic crayon box to travel to Color City, a fantastical place where color flows from an enchanted waterfall that keeps all the crayons vibrant. Yellow (voiced by Rosie Perez) is a nervous crayon who is accidentally left behind one night. During her journey to Color City, she awakens two unfinished drawings, and they end up following her into the magical realm. These drawings make a mess of Color City and try to block the flow of the Rainbow Waterfall and keep the colors for themselves. Yellow has to let go of her fears and team up with Red, Green, Blue, Black, and White to save the waterfall and bring color back to everyone. When the crayons finally face off with the villainous images, they discover that the drawings only wanted to be colored in. In the end, everyone overcomes their prejudices and judgments in order to help one another and improve the community. The characters are very basic with generic personalities. Though vivid, the animation is no frills and simple. The lack of plot and character development may not be a problem for younger viewers, but many kids will lose interest.