The story follows Yellow (Christina Ricci), a young (?) crayon who is terrified of everything (get it?). One night, she's trying to keep her constant panic under control as she makes her way back to the crayon box to travel to Color City, when a pair of creatures loom up from behind her. The larger creature, which has no mouth, is introduced by his smaller, flying companion Nat (Craig Ferguson) as King Scrawl. The pair of them are looking for someone to color them in, as they're nothing but scribbled outlines, still the color of the paper they were drawn on. Yellow declines, but in the process, accidentally reveals the existence of Color City (which is apparently a secret) before making the journey back home. The terrible twosome follow her, where they then head over to Color Mountain and block the waterfall. If citizens of Color City don't head over and take care of the two doodles before their owner wakes up, they'll be doomed to a slow loss of their colors before turning transparent and disappearing.

Those who read that summary are probably thinking, "wait, wait, wait, what?", but I regret to inform you I have no real answers. Why do the doodles come to life? What will coloring them in do to them, other than confuse Ben, the child that made the picture? Why will blocking the waterfall turn the crayons transparent? In a better movie, watching Color City go about its normal business would fill in a picture (ahem) of how their world works and why, but each new revelation -- such as a spa where the crayons go to have their tips resharpened -- only makes the film's premise seem stranger and more obscure. The film hardly feels like it has a screenplay, drifting from scene to scene as it racks up enough time (77 minutes) to be considered "feature-length." Even the conflict is sloppy, with someone explaining the threat before the villains have even caused a problem. Sure, kids aren't likely to wonder about these things, but there's also no inspiration here to feed theirs -- they'd be better off coloring pictures of their own characters.

Personality-wise, the film's four screenwriters have a single idea: personalities based on colors. Red (Rosie Perez) is a sassy lady. Black (David Kaye) is moody and unenthusiastic, and White (Jeremy Guskin) is the opposite, desperate to be useful. Baby Blue is a baby. These are surface-level at best and really bad jokes at worst, the two worst being Refried Beans (requisite child-friendly fart humor!) and Gray, an old man who is literally nothing but old man cliches, complaining -- apropos of nothing -- about "hippity-hop music" and yelling at Yellow to "get off my lawn." Other jokes consist mostly of color puns, and some lines just plain don't make sense (after a triumph involving Green coloring between the lines, he arrives at the opposite conclusion). Because the movie gives Yellow the most amount of screen time, Ricci is sort of, kind of able to give her a smidgen of actual personality, but it's a stretch at best, with her journey toward courageousness requiring a few too many nudges before she takes matters into her own hands.

Over the years, "cheap" CG animation has gotten better, and there are a few moments when the film's animation is halfway decent, including the scribbled appearance of King Scrawl and Nat, as well as the kaleidoscope effect of the tunnel leading from the real world to Color City. Then again, those elements are mostly about texture and appearance; actual action is less successful. The crayon people often move slowly through space, dulling the edge of action sequences (including one built around a King Kong parody kids won't even get). The film also contains a series of melodically adequate but visually uninteresting musical numbers that harken back to a different era of kids' cartoons. Mostly, the filmmakers seem to hope that making the film really colorful (which it is), and stacking the cast with celebrity voices (which also include Wayne Brady, Jessica Capshaw, Sean Astin, and Owen Wilson) will be enough to convince parents to rent or buy it, but just because kids will watch it doesn't mean they should.

The Blu-ray
The Hero of Color City arrives on Blu-ray in a slightly sickly yellow eco-friendly Blu-ray case (seemingly taken from Yellow's mid-movie appearance instead of her natural hue). The single-disc release features a pretty straightforward image of the crayon characters following a road out of Color City, and the entire package comes inside a glossy slipcover featuring the same imagery. The sleeve for the case can also be flipped over, revealing a textless version of the cover with the characters on it that kids can -- you guessed it -- color in themselves.

The Video and Audio
The basics of magnolia's digital-to-digital conversation of the original CGI files are conveyed properly in this Blu-ray's 1.78:1 1080p AVC transfer: colors are exceptionally vivid, and detail is razor-sharp. Unfortunately, any study of the backgrounds reveals a swarm of ugly artifacts and banding, at least in the nighttime scenes set in Ben's bedroom. Most of the transfer is impeccable and I'm sure none of the target audience is going to notice, but the flaws are there, if one looks for them. Sound is a lively DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track. The film features a fair amount of action and excitement, as well as some energetic music numbers, although, being a CG movie, the film has sort of a "sparse" feeling, since there's no ambience -- there's extremely "clean" dialogue, music, and sound effects, and generally only two of those things at once. English captions for the deaf and hard of hearing, and French and Spanish subtitles are also included.

The Extras
For what is almost a direct-to-video feature, the disc is surprisingly stacked with extras. "Playing the Characters" (9:53) is a three-part featurette with interviews from a disinterested Christina Ricci, a slightly confused Craig Ferguson, and an overly excited Sean Astin about their characters. Ricci talks about meeting fans of various generations, Ferguson gamely pitches a charity, and Astin talks about the process of voice-acting. This accompanies the three-part "Behind the Voices" (4:01), which shows Ferguson, Astin, and E.G. Daily recording their lines in the booth. "Creating The Hero of Color City" (8:48) is a basic EPK-style making-of featurette, with the producer and director talking about story and the production of the movie.

As is the norm for children's Blu-rays and DVDs, a number of kid-friendly interactive or extra-curricular bonuses are included. "Colorful Character Lines" is basically a soundboard-like feature that allows the viewer to click on one of nine characters and hear a random soundbyte from the film. The Hero of Color City Sing-Along is pretty self-explanatory, providing on-screen lyrics for the music. There's also a "Crayon "Juke" Box Music Medley" feature. No explanation as to why "Juke" is in quotes. The disc wraps up with artwork & drawing galleries, "Kid-Friendly Recipes From Bumble Bee", and instructions on how to print out coloring pages from the internet (really, a URL, not instructions), how to get the soundtrack (a menu that basically tells you to buy it in a store or on the internet), and finally, a promo (0:47) on how to donate crayons to the crayon recycling program called The Crayon Collection (crayoncollection.org).

A promo for "chideo" (unconvincing explanation: charity + video = chideo) plays before the main menu. No trailer for The Hero of Color City is included. All of the extras are presented in HD.

Conclusion
The Hero of Color City is built around the power of imagination, creativity, and adventure. Send your kids on a better adventure by allowing them to make one up, instead of watching The Hero of Color City. Skip it.