Finding your people is one of life’s greatest joys.
Not simply because belonging somewhere is the kind of cosy contented rush that money can’t buy, but because your family, and that’s what they are are in every meaningful respect, often take a form and an expression that you didn’t see coming and didn’t know you needed.
The magic of that coming together of people who need each other is displayed in charmingly heartfelt and rousingly musical fashion in Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, a film based on the book of the same name by Bernard Waber, and its predecessor, The House on East 88th Street.
The books centre on the titular Lyle of course, a singing crocodile (voiced and motion captured by Shawn Mendes) who is discovered in a wholly neglected exotic pets store one day by aspiring magic performing superstar Hector P. Valenti (Javier Bardem), a man who loves his new friend and ticket to the big-time, but who has a habit of running when things don’t quite work out as planned.
Such as when, after months and months of practise, the singing-but-not-talking Lyle freezes up in front of an audience at a make-it-or-break-it show on which Hector has literally bet the house; with the reviews terrible and Lyle retreating in shame, Hector loses his family’s precious brownstone, Lyle his friend and protector as Hector once again skips New York City and his world shrinks to an attic at the top of the home where, if anyone chances upon him, he pretends to be a stuffed crocodile in a case.
It’s a lonely 18 months until the Primm family move in, with mum (Constance Wu) and dad (Scoot McNairy) bringing their anxiety-ridden afraid-of-life son Josh (Winslow Fegley) with them, the last person you’d expect would warm to a living, breathing crocodile living in the attic above his eyrie bedroom but who is the absolutely who Lyle needs, and very much vice versa.
With Josh and Lyle becoming firm friends through nighttime dumpster diving and top of building singing, their lives are transformed, the twosome becoming the first members of a found family that ends up including mum and dad – after a lot of screaming which is understandable; crocodiles are not normally your first choice when it comes to your lonely son’s bestie – Josh’s schoolfriend Trudy (Lyric Hurd) and good old Hector who turns up one day, and mostly sticks around.
It’s a carnival of mismatched beings and personalities on paper, but this new found family, which comes together over hilariously tense scenes and delightfully upbeat musical numbers, the stand out being “Take a Look at us Now” which is euphorically joyful and optimistic, works because it turns out everyone needs that special someone, or someones rather, for life to work and in the case of Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile it happens to be this happily disparate group.
If you have ever felt you’d never find your crew, or you feel like that right now, then Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile is your film because while it won’t magically fix everything, though it feels like it will so boisterously is it when it gets it happy on, it will open your eyes to how it can be when the right people meet the right people, and of course, crocodile.
What elevates the film above just another all-singing, all-dancing, soul-reviving reminder that life can be every bit as gloriously uplifting, if not more so, as it can be sad and cruel, is the fact that it doesn’t solely stayed in the realm of the beatifically joyful.
There are a good many times in this most heartfelt of movies where the existential rubber really hits the road, with Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile unafraid to tackle what deep-seated loneliness, the kind that slowly but surely excoriates the soul, does to a person and how hard it can be to see what might lie beyond the current misery and loss.
Refreshingly the film gives the story to explore how it feels for Lyle to freeze up on stage and lose his “dad” and his home, how Josh feels frightened of life because his dad long ago lost his fighting, adventuresome spirit and how his mum, scared in her own way, finds sanctuary finds surety and purpose in following the recipe to the very last gram and droplet.
Taking the time to be honest about how much life can hurt and how when you are hurting, believing you will stop hurting seems like a pipe dream with no chance of being fulfilled, gives Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, buoyant of song and hope, some unexpected emotional heft.
It means that when the good times roll, and they do in ways that will make your heart sing and your feel dance across the tops of brownstones, figuratively at least, they really mean something because everyone has faced the worst that life can thrown at them and lived to tell the tale.
It makes the finale, where things do indeed reach a happy crescendo – no surprises there; if you’re expecting a darkly indie end to proceedings, you’ve walked into the wrong film – so much more richer and purposeful, ultimately making the film so much more intensely emotional and impactful than you might have thought would be the case.
You will undoubtedly waltz out of the film happy and joyous and humming a raft of instantly catchy tunes that have lyrical soul and melodically insistent lightness, and that’s what we all need from an escapist of cinematic entertainment, but you will also feel like someone has spoken to you and knows what you’re feeling and how much it matters to you to have people with whom you belong.
Maybe you have them, maybe they are yet to dance into your life; whatever the case, Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile is a love letter to the certainty that they will if they haven’t already, and that while a singing, dancing crocodile may not be among their number, that you will find the people who matter and will continue to matter, and that, even if the singing is just in your heart, they will change your life for the better for the duration.