Leo

MOVIE #1,331 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 01.30.24 I have pink eye (I think). My eyes have been burning for three+ days now as I write this on 22 January 2024 (I have somehow also been inflicted with the desire to write the date like I’m an English chap or euro boy). This is all to say that, yeah, the new year could have gotten off to a better start but look at me still plugging away in advance of the big site reboot, which I decided to start early this year by reviewing a whopping 26 films between 28 Jan and 2 Feb! I typically like to use January to get a jump on posting so I don’t get backlogged but I can’t stop my brain from getting the awful idea to critique eight kids flicks, which is what we’ll be doing today and tomorrow.

We start with Leo, the Adam Sandler Netflix musical about a lizard with a funny Adam Sandler voice, co-written by the Sandman himself (as well as co-written and co-directed by the great Robert Smigel). Of all the childrens movies I’ll be posting about, I’ve seen the least of this one. I would say no more than 30-40 minutes and that was whilst drunk hanging out with the kids on Thanksgiving (I made them put this on because I was curious, and I should note that there was middling interest at best). So why review it at all?

Well, I think I caught the gist. The one thing that struck me most about this was how strange the musical numbers were. They all felt like half an idea, which — especially when coupled with whatever Sandler’s doing with his voice here but SINGING — gave off incredibly strange vibes that I found fascinating. Smigel apparently wrote (and performed?) these tunes as well. See “Dear Drone” as an example.

This is all a very exasperated way of saying that I’ve tried to get my kids to watch this again but to no avail. I’m gonna keep trying! I need to see this in full. 8/10

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CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,330 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,331 ⫸

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Leo is a 2023 animated musical comedy film directed by Robert Marianetti, Robert Smigel and David Wachtenheim (in Marianetti and Wachtenheim's feature directorial debuts), written by Smigel, Adam Sandler, and Paul Sado, and produced by Sandler and Mireille Soria. The second animated feature from Sandler's production company Happy Madison Productions, coming 21 years after the first, Eight Crazy Nights (2002), it stars Sandler in the titular voice role, alongside Bill Burr, Cecily Strong, Jason Alexander, Sadie Sandler, Sunny Sandler, Rob Schneider, Jo Koy, Allison Strong, Jackie Sandler, Heidi Gardner, Robert Smigel, and Nick Swardson. The film tells the story of a tuatara longing for the wild and worried about dying who is taken home by different students per the assignment of a strict substitute teacher, but gets himself caught up in the troubles of each student, and offers great advice to each of them. It was released on November 21, 2023.