BEFORE: Film #350 for the year, it's kind of the last marker before I get to the horror film and the endgame for Year 16. Still have not run out of movies, because it seems there are more of them than ever, and they're all available SOMEWHERE on streaming or occasionally on the Dark Web (I try to go there as infrequently as possible, but you know, the chain needs to be maintained). So far the plan is holding, numerically I'm set to hit Christmas right on the button, with a great film I've been looking forward to that will close out the year. But, you know, plans sometimes change, still I believe in my linking skills and double-checking everything, so I believe I'm headed in the right direction and that's where I'll land.
Horror movies start in ten days, so don't say I didn't warn you, it may get really scary around here, but just remember if we lose any sleep we can all just catch up in No-Movie November. Adam Sandler carries over from "Spaceman".
THE PLOT: A 74-year-old lizard named Leo and his turtle friend decide to escape from the terrarium of a Florida school classroom, where they have been living for decades.
AFTER: Damn, another school-based film ended up on a weekend. But the film is about the kids in fifth grade taking the class pet home on the weekends, so maybe I can allow watching this on a Saturday, most of the action in the movie therefore takes place on weekends.
The hook for the film is that all animals can talk, but they've all agreed to not talk to humans. Can you blame them? Still, you'd think that at some point an animal who can talk would have, you know, said something, like "Don't eat me!" or "Please adopt me from this shelter!" Right? So in a sense this film borrows liberally from the "Toy Story" movies, where the toys can move and talk, they just don't do it when humans are around.
Sure, talking animals are a staple of animated films, especially the old Disney ones, but isn't it really a storytelling crutch? It immediately tells me that this film is not set in the real world, but in an alternate one where animals have the power of speech - but kids are probably so used to this in animated movies and TV shows that they don't even think about it, they just accept it. But you can see how MAYBE this could have been a film about the only two animals that could talk, and MAYBE they gained this ability by living in a grade school classroom, and seeing the same lessons taught again and again, day after day, year after year. Maybe this a plot point early in the production of "Leo", then the writers realized it just wouldn't work, because Leo the lizard ends up outside, far from the school and he needs to be able to talk to the other animals there.
The story really has to bend itself over backwards to allow Leo to go home with different students - I guess maybe schools just don't do this any more, certainly not since COVID, or maybe it resulted in too many dead classroom pets. So in this story the regular teacher is pregnant and starting to show, so the kids get a permanent substitute for the year, and the new teacher is very old-school and revives the practice of taking home the pet, because it teaches kids about responsibility. OK, but a few NITPICK POINTS here - Mrs. Salinas didn't just suddenly realize she was four months pregnant, so why wasn't this situation taken into account before the school year began? There probably would have been more time to find a better replacement than Ms. Malkin. And changing teachers wouldn't make something against school policy OK again, so either taking home the class pet is allowed or it isn't, and wouldn't be affected by a teacher change.
For that matter, why is fifth grade the last grade in elementary school? Is this different in various states and cities across the country? In my hometown SIXTH grade was as far as you could go in grade school, and junior high was seventh and eighth grades. Do some towns put sixth grade in "middle school" or junior high? What happens if a kid moves from one town to another, in-between fifth and sixth grade, and essentially has to "finish" grade school twice? Can we get some consistency in our country's educational system, please? Or am I just remembering a system that no longer exists?
Anyway, Leo has such a wealth of knowledge from watching the same fifth grade classroom for the last 74 years that he's an expert in child psychology and figuring out what clique each student belongs to, also giving them advice that cuts right to the heart of their problem or anxiety. There's the kid who talks too much, the kid with over-protective parents who have a drone following him around, the spoiled rich girl, the class clown and even the class bully. Leo enjoys all of the attention he gets after solving their problems, but he's also told each kid that they're the only one that he talks to. What could possibly go wrong there? He also ends up talking to Ms. Malkin, who never accomplshed her dream of being a REAL teacher, not just a sub.
When the kids all feel confident and they've won the History Fair (weird, the original goal was to win the Academicathlon, what changed over the course of the film?) Ms. Malkin wants to take all of the credit for their success, so she drives Leo out to the Everglades and leaves him there. Since he's never had to survive in the wild, his chances, well, they're not good considering all the hungry alligators there. This is ironic because Leo always dreamed of going to the Everglades, and he finds that it's not all it's cracked up to be. Good message for the kids - never leave home, where you're comfortable, just keep living with your parents in your old room as long as you can. Someday you'll own their house!
The fifth graders give up their trip to Magic Land Park when they learn that Leo is down in the Everglades and might need their help. Another great message for the kids, a field trip is a great time to ditch the chaperones, hijack the school bus and take it to another destination that your parents didn't approve! Hey, if it saves the life of just ONE lizard, isn't that worth putting the entire class of kids in danger?
This film has a lot of heart, though, like somebody really THOUGHT about the problems kids might be having today and came up with some solutions or words of advice that could help a lot of kids out there in the audience. And, a lot of the film is in the form of songs, so that must have been a challenge. However, as a man in his fifties, I simply cannot approve the song where a class of 10-year olds is feeling nostalgic about the times when they were nine, eight, seven years old and so on. NO NO NO, kids at that age are not allowed to be wistfully nostalgic about their childhoods! That just doesn't happen until they're at least 40!
Also starring the voices of Bill Burr (last seen in "Unfrosted"), Cecily Strong (last seen in "The Female Brain"), Jason Alexander (last seen in "Yogi Berra: It Ain't Over"), Rob Schneider (last seen in "I Am Chris Farley"), John Farley (ditto), Allison Strong (last seen in "The Week Of"), Jo Koy (last seen in "Can We Take a Joke?"), Sadie Sandler (last seen in "The Wrong Missy"), Jackie Sandler (ditto), Nick Swardson (ditto), Chris Titone (ditto), Jonathan Loughran (ditto), Sunny Sandler (also carrying over from "Spaceman"), Coulter Ibanez, Bryant Tardy (last seen in "Logan"), Corey J., Ethan Smigel (also last seen in "The Week Of"), Roey Smigel (ditto), Rebecca Vigil (ditto), Christian Capozzoli (ditto), Katie Hartman (ditto), TienYa Safko, Gloria Manning, Carson Minniear, Reese Lores, Benjamin Bottani, Aidan Liam Phillipson, Heidi Gardner (last heard in "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish"), Robert Smigel (last seen in "The King of Staten Island"), Lileina Joy, Stephanie Hsu (last seen in "Everything Everywhere All at Once"), Ryun Yu, Nicholas Turturro (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Janie Haddad Tompkins (last seen in "Unicorn Store"), Paul Brittain (last seen in "Killing Gunther"), Tiffany Topol, Dan Reitz, Sunita Param, Sonya Leslie (last seen in "People Like Us"), Germar Terrell Gardner (last seen in "Hubie Halloween"), Rose Abdoo (last seen in "Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar"), Alex Quijano (last seen in "Larry Crowne"), Sheila Carrasco, Doug Dale (last heard in "Hotel Transylvania 2"), Jonny Solomon (ditto), David Wachtenheim, Robert Marianetti, Chris Kattan (last seen in "The Ridiculous 6"), Nora Wyman, Blake Clark (last seen in "That's My Boy"), Joel Marsh Garland (last seen in "Rocket Science"), Noah Robbins (last seen in "Villains"), Frankie Figliozzi, Kyra Wachtenheim, Aliza Pelavin.
RATING: 6 out of 10 bobble-head dolls
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