‘Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile’ Review: Shawn Mendes Voices the Beloved Kids’ Character in a CGI-Meets-Live-Action Fable That’s Agreeable But Formulaic

variety.com:

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic The movie format where a character beloved by kids becomes a CGI creature, who is then plugged into a live-action universe, is one of the most casually technically astonishing of all popcorn genres — and, as often as not, one of the most stunted.

It almost doesn’t matter if the hero is Garfield or Stuart Little, Alvin and the Chipmunks or Sonic the Hedgehog: The way this genre has descended from the noisy bravura of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” the actors tend to be reduced to one-note stooges who get stuck in too many green-screen reaction shots, whereas the critter at the center — the animated star — is, almost inevitably, a preening chatterbox who wears out his welcome by pelting the live-action players, and the audience, with too many bad punchlines.

But “Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile” is an exception. The title beastie at the heart of this musical fairy tale is a scaly, life-size, anthropomorphic saltwater crocodile who occupies the attic of an Upper West Side brownstone and doesn’t talk…at all.

He gets no bad jokes and no conversation; he’s quietly observant and a bit shy. Except, that is, when he opens his mouth and sings, in the lovely soaring mellifluous baritone of Shawn Mendes, who delivers half a dozen new songs by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (as well as several of his own), the composer-lyricists of “The Greatest Showman” and “Dear Evan Hansen,” whose propulsive hooky romantic melodies tend to go down like butter. (The songs here aren’t nearly as memorable as the “Greatest Showman” songs, but they’ll do.)   “Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile” is based on the popular series of children’s books, by Bernard Waber, that kicked off in 1962 with the publication of “The House on East 88th Street” (the