Movie Thoughts: Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile (2022)

• Released: October 7, 2022
  
• Directed by: Josh Gordon, Will Speck
• Running time: 1h 46min
• Rating: 2/5

Synopsis

A family befriends a singing crocodile and must protect him against the people who are after him.

My Thoughts

Finally watched this one now that it's on Netflix and I gotta say I'm disappointed. Not that I had huge expectations to begin with, but boy it's just not very good.

Most of the characters in this movie have practically no personality traits. Lyle is pretty much a blank slate of a character. He has one trait, which is that he has stage-fright, but he gets over that so after that there's really nothing left in this character that sets him apart.

Josh and his parents have very little to them as well. Josh's thing is that he is nervous and anxious, but he gets over that super soon after meeting Lyle. The same goes for his mother who is very organized but once again gets over that pretty soon after meeting the crocodile, leading to them feeling like they loose the only semblance of personality they have after meeting Lyle. The only main character with a distinct personality is Hector and he honestly just kinda sucks so. Not great.

The pacing in this movie, especially in the first half or so, is also way too fast. Lyle and Josh don't really get much of a time to bond, they just meet and pretty soon thereafter they're instantly besties and Josh gets over his fears. Same with his mother and later his father after meeting Lyle. After that it just becomes a "keep the pet hidden and a secret" type of movie. Granted, the pacing slows down a bit in the second half, but the first half felt like it went by way too fast.

The plot was also very predictable and I'm just not too fond about how this movie portrays having a crocodile in a tiny New York apartment as a good thing. Also I just gotta say that I was really hoping for some kind of explanation about Lyle, why he's so different from other animals, but the movie just gives none. Why is Lyle anthro? Why can he sing but not talk? Why are none of the other animals in the film like this? We're never even given a hint at why. Our characters also just seem way too cool with an anthro crocodile who can sing just existing. Very rarely do people even question Lyle's existence. Just a bit confusing an under-explained if you ask me.

Finally I also gotta mention how it's kind of weird that they have the cat character be portrayed entirely by a CGI cat. Like, couldn't they just get a real Persian for the more simple scenes? I get that for the scenes where the cat does more extravagant actions they'd use a CGI stand-in, but the fact that this character is entirely CGI is just super distracting. For Lyle it at least kind of works because he's anthro; he's so different from other, more realistic crocodiles that it makes sense he'd be CGI. But for a cat character who (mostly) in the movie just does cat things? Surely they could've gotten an actual cat for the simpler scenes. I don't know, it just looks very distracting when you see the cat's owner cuddling with what is very obviously not a real cat.

Overall this isn't the worst movie ever or anything but it's just so generic and bland that it's very forgettable. Not recommended.