Well, here’s a combination that feels like it was pulled out of an Angry Critic’s nightmares: A Happy Madison animated movie about talking animals. Or maybe just this Angry Critic’s nightmares, since both talking animal movies and Happy Madison productions have been regular targets since this blog started. But for as much shit as I give the both of them when they’re bad, that’s mainly because I still have fond memories of when they were both good. As I got into when I looked at Hubie Halloween, Adam Sandler was part of my childhood and was something of an oddball inspiration as his stock character of the quick-to-anger outsider was a lot like me back then. And talking animal movies exist for a reason, as they make telling stories to kids about characters going through more adult issues easier to deal with, since cute animals are a lot easier to relate to than those old people with their rules and bedtime mandates (in a child’s mind, at least).
This film takes both of those elements and squishes them together to tell the tale of Leo (Adam Sandler), a class pet lizard who starts to bond with the students as he talks with them. Sandler has been playing dads on-screen for a long time by now, but this character feels the most like a dad, or at the very least the most informed by Sandler’s own experiences in the area. For most of the film, he’s fixated on both his age and possibly approaching death, and wanting to pass on knowledge to the young’ins while he’s still around. This hits pretty close to home, knowing how much he influenced my own childhood, and his performance has a certain earthy delivery to it that’s quite warm and inviting. It also turns his habit of casting his kids in his movies into a positive for the film overall, since it then takes the tone of him directly teaching his own children. Again, through the approachable veneer of a talking lizard.
Well, that and the animation, provided by Animal Logic. Yes, the LEGO Movie people from right here in Australia, and they bring a similar cartoonish fidelity to the animals that they did to the Super-Pets in their movie. As for the human characters, the design aesthetic is near-identical to the humans in Inside Out, albeit with slightly less fidelity because this is still a Netflix original. Although with that said, this is easily some of the best visual work the platform has ever touched on an exclusive basis, with texture work that could hold up to scrutiny next to the likes of Pixar and DreamWorks. I even like the freakish spherical designs given to the kindergartners; it fits with the ‘this is how children look to adults’ vibe of the larger story.
Then there’s the music, because this is a return to the days of Eight Crazy Nights in more ways than one. Scored by Geoff Zanelli with lyrics by writer/director Robert Smigel (who also worked on The Week Of and the Hotel Transylvania series), it’s a musical made mostly of message songs, where Leo passes on advice to the students when they take care of him after school. It’s something of a deconstruction of the entire talking animal sub-genre, since this is directly about having a talking animal that children can comfortably confide, and the messages themselves are pretty good too. Knowing when to talk and when to listen, telling the drone that your parents bought to constantly monitor you to leave you alone, how crying is for weaklings; y’know, the usual stuff. Okay, that last one in particular sounds pretty dodgy, but as fully realised, it’s honestly one of the most effective and well-earned sucker-punches I’ve experienced with a film all year.
And on that note, I should probably bring up that this one is a real weepy… or at least, it was for me. Even though I’m nowhere near the age of either Leo or Adam Sandler himself, I’ve been thinking a bit about getting older myself. I’m the eldest of six siblings, and I feel something of a responsibility to pass what I’ve learnt onto them. That it’s possible to thrive as an outsider, that you can choose your own path in life and define your own happiness, and that you can take the crap that you’ve survived and turn that into tools that the next generation can use to become even greater. It’s… a lot to think about, and I can relate to Leo’s character arc balancing fear of the end with making the most of what he has left.
Ignoring how this kind of statement would normally be a back-handed compliment at best, this is easily some of Happy Madison’s best work ever. It is a phenomenally affecting family flick, with some fun entertainment for the kids, and some fulfilling and sombre contemplation for the parents, told through a consistently well-acted cast of characters (even the de facto antagonist, substitute teacher Ms. Malkin, is properly fleshed out) and some pretty catchy music. It taps into the side of Adam Sandler, the oddball who reassures that there is a place in the world for all the other oddballs out there, that I hold close to my heart, and it even helped clarify some aspects of the talking animal sub-genre that, after so long of bitching about them, I’ve finally managed to get my head around.
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