This desperately wants to have the charm, the wit, the zing, the joie de vivre of Paddington, and it doesn't.

Full Review | Jan 9, 2024

Bardem’s totally unexpected performance as a song and dance man is the main reason to see the film.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 6, 2023

[Left an] uncanny aftertaste, common to much current Hollywood family entertainment: a sense that wit, personality and emotional insight have been more or less skilfully simulated.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 23, 2022

It's done very well. Exhilarating... [But] it's a little inconsistent.

| Oct 14, 2022

Javier Bardem alone is the flickering light of intrigue in this saccharine musical adaptation of Bernard Waber’s children’s book...

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 14, 2022

Utterly insane but oddly endearing family feature...

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 14, 2022

Would happily sit through a sequel.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 13, 2022

The film’s good-natured warmth wins the day, just.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 12, 2022

Good cheer and exuberant humor enliven this clever live-action musical adaptation of Bernard Waber’s classic children’s-book series.

| Oct 11, 2022

In moments, “Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile” is a warm and whimsical family adventure comedy, but at other times, it’s a hallucinatory fever dream. Both are fine options, but the purgatory in between these tones is too strange to actually work.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 8, 2022

Had the movie embraced its creepier glimmers, Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile may have been an appropriately horrific October release. Instead, it bears only the suggestion of such a thing and never finds distinction.

| Oct 7, 2022

A warm-hearted family film with great musical numbers that will make another generation of kids hopefully search the attic on the chance that they might find a singing crocodile.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 7, 2022

This family flick delivers enough pulse-quickening earworms and warmth to melt even the iciest of hearts.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 6, 2022

The movie works hard to be a soulfully offbeat kiddie entertainment, an antidote to the gimcrack cynicism that has ruled too many cartoon-cutup-in-the-land-of-live-action Hollywood products.

| Oct 6, 2022

I doubt my kids will be clamouring to watch Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile again. But they will likely add its songs to their at-home repertoire. And I can live with that.

| Oct 6, 2022

...a movie likely to appeal as much to anyone who enjoys pop-scored animal hijinks on TikTok as to anyone who actually remembers the books.

| Oct 6, 2022

It’s known that crocodiles can slow their heart rate to stay underwater for long periods of time, but it’s hard to feel any heart beating here at all.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 6, 2022

“Lyle” has a brisk, whimsical momentum that is utterly infectious in the early going. Then it stops dead...

| Oct 6, 2022

If a CGI crocodile with the dulcet tenor of a pop idol seems at odds with Waber’s freehand illustrations, Javier Bardem is perfectly in step as eccentric showman Hector P. Valenti, star of stage and screen.

| Original Score: B- | Oct 6, 2022

You can practically see the glisten of perspiration on the actors’ faces from the effort everyone is making to put their characters across. Their roles seem like ill-fitting clothing worn awkwardly.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Oct 6, 2022