‘Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile Review: Shawn Mendes Voices The Beloved Kids Character In A CGIMeetsLiveAction Fable Thats Agreeable But Formulaic

The film's format, in which a child-friendly character is transformed into a computer-generated creature and then inserted into a live-action universe, is one of the technically weirdest popcorn genres and often one of the most stunted. . Almost no matter which hero - Garfield, Stuart Little, Alvin and the Chipmunks or Sonic the Hedgehog: the genre has evolved from the beefy Who Framed Roger Rabbit, actors tend to boil down to one thing - looking for puppets to get caught. in many green screen reaction shots, while the creature in the center - the animated star - almost inevitably transforms into a talkative boy who runs out of hospitality by attracting actors and live audiences. , with many bad turns.

But "Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile" is an exception. The titular monster at the center of this musical tale is an anthropomorphic, scaly, life-sized saltwater crocodile who lives in the attic of an Upper West Side mansion and never talks ... ever. I don't understand bad jokes and conversations. He is quiet and a bit shy. Except when he opens his mouth and sings in Shawn Mendes' beautiful baritone, and half a dozen new songs by Bing Pasek and Justin Paul (plus a few of his own), the vocal composers of The Greatest Showman and Dear Evan Hansen, that "Impulsive Romantic Melodies of s tend to run out. Like butter. (These songs are as memorable as The Greatest Showman songs, but memorable.)

Lyle, Lyle, the Crocodile is based on Bernard Weber's popular children's book series, which began in 1962 with the publication of The Houses on East 88th Street (sequel to Lyle, Lyle and the Crocodile). In 1965, another seven volumes of Layla were published. These books have not gone away and have built generations of loyal followers over the decades, almost guaranteeing the new film will be a hit with the whole family. The film strives to be original entertainment for children and is an antidote to the useless satire that dominates many Hollywood cartoons in the land of live entertainment.

However, for the sake of the purity of his pedigree, albeit sweet and touching, I hope Lyle, Lyle and the Crocodile isn't just a cute movie for the wizard at heart. . I kept thinking about it and looking at it: why does it seem both touching and absent, innocent and calculated, something new and not as new as I would like it to be?

Part of it honestly has to do with character design. In the books, Lyle is a wobbly hand-drawn creature with a winning smile who casts a sweet spell of random magic on the Pimm, the family who ends up sharing space with him. It's a lyrically simple fantasy pet. (That's how it was presented in the 1987 HBO music adaptation.) But in the new film, Lyle is recreated as a scaly, lifelike monster that looks a lot like an adult Geico gecko. It perfectly fills the space he's in, especially when he sings a hot song like "Top of the World" (at the top of St. St. However, the audience's attachment to Lyle is still a bit lacking. disturbing in the way he sings, how he sings, only to become an anonymous character again, physically hypothetical and totally underdeveloped.

Now the Primms are a family in a movie, starring Constance Wu as Kathy, a neurotic cookbook writer married to Joseph (Scott McEnery), a simple math teacher, and stepmother of her son Josh (Winslaw Fegley). ), who is trying to find his way to a new school. They moved into this cozy brownstone house in Manhattan because it was the pinnacle of Joseph's teaching career.

Upstairs, Josh runs into Lyle, who at first strikes him as terrifying, like a Jurassic Park monster. But Josh and the whole family got used to it pretty quickly - in Katie's case, pretty quickly, as Lyle forces her to "break the recipe," a fun number about braving to cook for the homeless. A book that completely reshapes his soul in about three minutes without even realizing it. (That crawler is faster than Mary Poppins.) This is just one example of how the film's directors Will Speck and Josh Gordon set things up for immediate effect but don't know how to set the mood. They also don't make diving into Lyle's dumpsters attractive - I can see how a crocodile could dig it up, but the idea of ​​people looking for foodies never fits.

Another monster close at hand is Beams 'basement neighbor, the terrifying and man-hating Mr. Grandpa, played by Stranger Things' Brett Gilman in a very entertaining performance that makes him an edgy and ironic portrait of a certain type of indigestion. York is an arrogant miser. Gilman has real power as an actor. (Someone should play him in an Allen Ginsberg biopic.) Grumpy cat Gramps is a scene thief, and Javier Bardem, as the stylish showman who is Lyle's original owner, brings out the old T. Lyle scams. , Lyle, the crocodile "the entertainment vibe is enough to survive, but the film made me want to " sing along "to its beautiful creatures - and this film was so much better, with more organic emotional gains. where Shawn Mendes sings Lyle defines his character, but not really, it's more like watching the strangest movie at a party in the world.

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