Movie Thoughts: Leo (2023)

 

• Released: November 21, 2023
• Directed by: Robert Marianetti, Robert Smigel, David Wachtenheim
• Running time: 1 h 42 min
• Rating 3.5/5

Synopsis

The elderly tuatara Leo and his best friend Squirtle have been class pets all their lives. Wanting to make something of his last year of life, Leo decides he wants to go out there and see the world, while he also wants to contribute to the current class's well-being by bonding with the kids, breaking the secret rule that animals can't talk to humans.

My Thoughts

I had no real thoughts going into this movie. Watched the trailers, they looked okay, but then I moved on and didn't think about it again until it came out. Then I watched it and...honestly, I'm kind of surprised by how much I like it. Not that I expected it to be outright bad going in, but the trailer wasn't that memorable and didn't give me much to work with. What I got ended up being a pretty sweet and funny movie.

Is it perfect? Absolutely not. The plot definitely falls into the category of "generic" and I don't vibe too much with this being a musical (aside from some jokes they make with the songs). But for every dumb joke or cliché moment there was a good joke or a heartfelt moment to keep me engaged. So no, not a perfect movie, but definitely a fun one.

I guess if I do have one issue it's the visuals. They're overall rather good, however there's just something that looks off about some of the human character designs. They were bordering sometimes on falling into the uncanny valley to me. Not explicitly uncanny, but definitely close to it. This mostly applies to the children characters (not counting the kindergartners). They don't look bad and I haven't seen any other reviewer bring up this problem, but something about them just didn't look quite right to me at times. The other animal character designs and the adults/kindergartners looked fine to me, though.

The humor is really where I think the movie shines. Well, mostly. There are definitely some low-brow gross-out jokes or bad ones in here, but there's also some moments that genuinely had me laughing out loud. And I'm not one who easily laughs at stuff trying to be comedic, so kudos to them. 

One other minor thing that does bother me is the fact that this movie seems to think that tuataras are a species native to America. Leo makes sense because he's a pet, but later he is stuck in the wilderness, where he meets a ton of wild tuataras, which just makes no sense considering this movie's US setting. If this had been set in New Zealand this scene would've made perfect sense, but it's just weird seeing it in a wild US national park setting. Just imagine a bunch of giraffes or tigers walking around there, same bizarre idea of a species that doesn't belong there. If they'd had Leo run into a species of lizard or something that's native that could've worked, but there's no way there's just a bunch of this semi-rare New Zealand lizard living in the Everglades.

Overall a fun and heartfelt movie though. Not perfect, and I get if it's not for everyone, but I had a surprisingly good time with it. Might even re-watch it sometime.