Leo (2023)

by Cyboarnetic

I was babysitting my great nephew today and he decided he wanted to watch Leo. I've seen the trailers before and I didn't really seek it out on my own. If I wanted to watch Adam Sandler do a wacky voice I'd watch Hotel Transylvania. Anyways, we started watching the film and I was surprised to find myself enjoying parts of it.

So first off; I don't think the film is a masterpiece or anything. It's not going to win any awards but it has pretty good animation. The main thing I didn't expect it to have was heart. I could sit through the worst movie as long as it felt like it had some love put into it somewhere and Leo definitely had that if it didn't have anything else.

We start the film with music that feels less like a song and more like you're being talked at melodically. Robert Smigel's voice acting is great but his song writing is absolute trash and Geoff Zanelli's score didn't help. The big issues with the music was its blandness, lack of any genuine emotion, and terrible comedic timing. If you're gonna watch this film expect to tune out during every unmemorable song.

The plot is genuine enough to pull you in: Leo, one of the class pets, is getting old so he wants to make his grand escape to the wild. His attempts to escape during the weekends he spends at the students houses are foiled when he begins to talk to the students. From there, old uncle Leo makes each kid feel special and helps them with their problems. He forgets about his want to escape and slowly helps the entire class through their school year dealing with their grumpy maternity substitute Ms.Malkin. Of course our joyless substitute takes credit for all of Leo's help and is crushed when she finds out her students aren't actually improving because of her, but a talking lizard. The kids are also upset when they realize Leo's been talking to everyone and not just them so they leave hurt by the reptile's actions.

Ms.Malkin has a talk with Leo that night and seemingly has a breakthrough to be a kinder teacher, but reverses it the next day when they win the History fair and she's met with a full time job and tons of praise from the parents. At that point she decides to take Leo and give him what he's always wanted by dropping him off in a National Park and driving away. From there he realizes he's not at all cut out for life in the wild due to being raised in captivity. The kids learn of Ms.Malkin's betrayal from a drone riding Squirtle the turtle on the way to their reward trip to the local theme park "Magic Land Park". So they trick their driver (the hot gym teacher Ms.Malkin has some sort of creepy parasocial relationship with) and drive off to save Leo and thank him for everything he's done for them. Finally, the film ends with Leo being saved, the kids learning from their mistakes, Ms.Malkin turning over a new leaf, and both Squirtle and Leo following Ms.Malkin to her new Kindergarten class. I left out a lot of weird details but that's the basic summary.

A lot of the kids had their spotlight and it seemed paced pretty well but I think Ms.Malkin's character turn was done a little wonky. Her decision to be a kinder teacher seemed a little forced and then the immediate reversal and rebound once she was confronted felt a little more in character. If I were writing I'd take out her early attempt at redemption and have it be more gradual before her relapse into a bitter old sub again.

Leo himself was great and Squirtle was a decent contrast to him, but did Squirtle really need to bring up his cloaca? Like I'm not even joking, a kid asks where babies come from and he brings up his cloaca. Could have just stuck with the egg laying thing but nah gotta have that cloaca. It made me laugh but it probably wasn't the best thing to bring up around my great nephew haha.

I thought the animation was fun and the voice acting was great but what really stood out to me was the character design. I love Leo's model and Ms.Malkin is very much reminiscent of some of the teachers I knew. The kindergartners were turned into little flesh eating gremlins and I loved that! I thought the 5th grade class was pretty diverse in appearance, but they could have done with more variety in body proportions like the "held back bully" trope character.

Overall, I can't rate it too high because the music was just grating and some of the plot points were just meh but I gotta give it props. I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would.