Leo

Adam Sandler voices a lizard. What more do you want?

Leo is a fun kid’s movie about growing up. The Sandman voices a lizard that lives as a class pet in a grade school. One by one the kids take him home for a weekend, where he reveals to them he can talk and develops a friendship with each of them, teaching them valuable life lessons and that they are loved.

It’s a fun premise with a good cast. In supporting roles you can find Bill Burr, Cecily Strong, and the ever-funny Jason Alexander. The cast gels together well and sound like they’re having a good time.

Oh yeah, this movie is a musical. I had no idea until they started singing. Honestly it took until the beginning of the third song for me to come to terms with it actually being a musical and these weren’t one off songs. While entertaining in the moment, writing this review a few days later the songs were largely forgettable and not overly important to the story. I only remember the Jason Alexander musical number because it was sung by Jason Alexander.

The film is at its most entertaining when The Sandman is able to form bonds with the various children of the classroom, convincing each of them they are the only kid who knows he can talk. Him struggling to juggle all of these friendships gets very complicated. There are some strange children in the class, including one that is cared for by a drone which he hates.

I enjoyed this enough. It had some really funny moments – particularly everytime the odd-looking kindergarteners were onscreen – that made me laugh a lot. On the negative side, The Sandman was doing a truly terrible voice that was hard to listen to most of the time. I was never tempted to turn it off and was mostly entertained the entire time – but there are plenty of time when my mind would drift or I wished I was watching something else. I’d give it a score of 5/10. I’ll probably never watch this one again, but I’m sure The Sandman will always be present in my watchlist.