Metacritic reviews

Leo proved to be a perfect, lighthearted watch on a rainy evening that left us with a feeling of bonhomie before switching off the lights for the night.

From references to Lin-Manuel Miranda (Moana) to songs that don’t rhyme and even metalinguistic performances – the one with the clocks is especially good because it completely underscores a particular character’s personality – Leo shows a surprising level of maturity that we’ve only come to expect from Pixar and Studio Ghibli films.

However immature Sandler’s sense of humor may have been in the past, he seems to have a pretty good handle on what makes kids tick. The movie can be making potty jokes one minute and delivering practical advice the next, wrapping with the sensible suggestion to “find your Leo.”

If you’re watching Leo, it should be to see Vijay show off in between animal attacks, car flips, and celebrity cameos. And even if you don’t expect much from Leo, it still might give you exactly what you need.

Though Leo is perhaps not the most groundbreaking animated film of the year, its gentle tone and emotion mixed with some standard anarchic gags from the Happy Madison school of comedy work in its favor.

The film can’t decide if it wants to be truly bizarre, which is when it’s funniest, or simple and sweet, when it’s the most dramatically effective. These aren’t the worst problems for a movie to have.

What makes Leo special are the kinds of lessons on offer. Its message is well-timed for a generation who find themselves held hostage by their parents’ anxieties and stand to inherit a world of problems. Leo encourages adults to let go and reminds kids that growing up doesn’t have to be so scary.

Brightly animated and with moments of surprising insight, there’s a warm likability to Leo that radiates, for those still in the classroom and those who left it long ago.

A somewhat funny, perversely family-friendly musical-comedy about all of the ways that modern parents are making their children insane with anxiety.

Leo can sometimes have a jolt of energy from its slapstick sequences or its bright color palette, in which Leo the lizard flies through the air, floats on a bubble, or meets other talking animals. But it's all defined by its assembly line animation, in which the spell of watching life-like characters and settings can be easily broken by looking at the backgrounds of shots for just a few seconds.