Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile (4 Stars)

After my grandson Oliver saw the trailer for this film last week he wanted to watch it. The sight of a walking, singing crocodile made him laugh. Today we went to the cinema, and he wasn't disappointed. It's a much better film than "Meine Chaosfee und Ich", which left him cold.

The film is about a boy called Josh who moves into a house in New York, Manhattan, with his family. In the attic he finds a crocodile that's been left behind by the house's previous owner, the magician Hector Valenti. The crocodile is very special. He can sing and dance. Apart from that he's a friendly crocodile. He has a loud roar, but he never eats anyone.

At first Josh spends time alone with the crocodile. Then his mother gets to know him, and finally his father. The magician returns and tells them that the crocodile's name is Lyle.

The film is cute, and it's frequently so hilarious that I had to laugh out loud in the cinema. I don't know whether my six-year-old grandson was able to understand the magician's motivation. Usually children's films have a clear line between black and white, but Hector Valenti was in the grey zone. He loved Lyle, and he did a lot to help him, but he abandoned him for money when he was broke. That's what people are like in the real world, but children can deal with black and white better.

Lyric Hurd plays Trudy, Josh's only friend in school. She only has a small role, but her acting is outstanding. I look forward to seeing more of her in future years.

The film I saw today was dubbed into German. As always, German dubbing is high quality, but I was curious about something. Not only the dialogue, the songs were also sung in German, so they can't possibly have been sung by Shawn Mendes, the singer in the original film. The songs sounded too good to be translations, so I suspect that completely different songs were used for the German version. I'd like to buy it on Blu-ray and compare the versions.