Movie Thoughts: Arlo the Alligator Boy (2021)

• Released: April 16 2021
• Directed by: Ryan Crego
• Running time: 1 h 30 min
• Rating 3.5/5

Synopsis

A boy, half man, half alligator, goes to look for his father in the big city.

My Thoughts

While I initially wasn't too hyped for Arlo, I must say it's grown on me. The main thing that put me off was some of the character designs. I don't know why, but based on the previews I saw there weren't many of them that were particularly working for me, including the main character. 

But I'm glad to say that this is a good movie with a lot of heart to it! The character designs did take some getting used to for me, but they quickly grew on me as I progressed through the film. I particularly like Berties, Alia's and Tiny Tony's designs now that I've grown accustomed to them. 

The animation is wonderful, being (from what I can tell) mostly a mix between puppet and hand-drawn animation. It was very smooth and pretty much all of it worked. The only part that kind of threw me off sometimes is when Arlo would move his upper jaw as if it was a separate entity from his skull. That just looks kind of off, since they're all connected.

The characters grew on me, too. I was worried Arlo was going to have an annoying voice, but that faded pretty quickly. He also has a great singing voice. I really do like the found family aspect of the story, and the (literally) colorful cast of mix-and-match creatures we have for our mains. I was also surprised by the twist of Arlo's father being a hybrid person as well, and I genuinely like how he turned his act around when he saw it was hurting his boy. But I'm also really glad about the ultimate conclusion Arlo makes: that his real family is not decided by blood, but by who he loves.

While there are maybe a bit too many for my liking, the songs absolutely slapped for the most part. They aren't the type of songs I'll likely be listening to outside of the movie, but they absolutely were not hard on the ears and some of them were even really good.

I guess one thing I could bring up is that, out of our entire main cast, I didn't get a clear impression of Alia's character. Her one running joke is that she can't drive, but she doesn't really show a lot of her personality outside of that and just her doing generic cat stuff. 

So, I'm glad to say that Arlo the Alligator Boy was a treat to watch. I don't know if I'll be watching the attached series when it comes out, but this movie did leave a pretty darn good first impression.