Leo is a 2023 animated musical comedy film written by Robert Smigel, Adam Sandler & Paul Sado and directed by Smigel, David Wachtenheim, and Robert Marianetti. It stars the voice talents of Sandler himself, Bill Burr, Rob Schneider, Cecily Strong, Jackie Sandler, Sunny Sandler, Sadie Sandler, Nicholas Turturro, Heidi Gardner, Stephanie Hsu, Jo Koy, and Nick Swardson.
The film follows the titular Class Pet (Sandler), a seventy-four year-old lizard who learns he has about one year left on his life expectancy. Setting out to complete his bucket list, Leo winds up entangled in the problems of the children in his class. The film premiered on Netflix November 21, 2023. Animation for the film is provided by its subsidiary Animal Logic.
Leo includes examples of the following:
- Actor IS the Title Character: As the film's marketing states, Adam Sandler is Leo.
- Aerith and Bob: The school's class pets, who are named Leo and Squirtle.
- The All-Solving Hammer: Ms. Malkin uses her handheld vacuum to dispose of almost everything she wants to get rid of, even if it can't realistically fit in there.
- Alpha Bitch: Jayda seems well on her way to becoming one of these, until Leo teaches her humility.
- Animate Inanimate Object: The singing and dancing stop watches.
- Art Shift:
- The montage of the abusements Leo and Squirtle suffered while at the students' homes has backgrounds styled like watercolor paintings.
- During Eli's song, the characters look like stickers on a scrapbook.
- The end credits are done in 2D animation.
- Artistic License – Biology: Leo combines features from a bunch of different lizards, like iguanas, geckos and chameleons, and is supposedly a tuatara (a lone surviving species of prehistoric reptile that are not actually lizards).
- Squirtle is shown to be able to remove his shell, an impossibility for real terrapins as the top of their shells are actually fused to their spines.
- In-Universe, Played for Laughs example: when one of the kids asks Squirtle where babies come from, he gives them a rundown on turtle reproduction instead of human. As for why a terrestrial box turtle in a fifth grade classroom would know the mating habits of sea turtles, best not to look too far into it.
- Awesome, but Impractical: The clown at Jayda's birthday party sculpts bubble animals, which naturally pop at the slightest handling, which he then blames on the kids for not holding them right.
- Awesomeness by Analysis: Because they’ve seen seventy-four 5th grade classes back-to-back, Leo and Squirtle can read their latest one like books.
- Bag of Holding: Ms. Malkin's handbag holds a lot of stuff in it somehow, including a hamster cage (with a hamster skeleton still in it), an abacus, several textbooks and weapons, a portable vacuum, and a meter stick that's much longer than the bag itself.
- Bait-and-Switch: The lesson Leo imparts on Mia is how just crying about something isn't really going to help much, so suck it up. And, at first, Mia seems to take the lesson to heart, but she shows that she was just pretending, and brings out a biology text book to show the benefits of crying, and Leo walks away with a It's Okay to Cry. Later on, Mia ends up using Leo's words in her history presentation, and even later, Leo lets out a cry and comes to agree that he feels the benefits of letting himself cry.
- Banned in China: In-Universe. One of the rollercoasters at Magic Land Park is apparently so dangerous (apparently, it caught fire once) it was banned in Europe, but not in Florida! It just makes the students more excited to go on it.
- Barbaric Bully: Anthony starts out this way, until Leo brings out his insecurities.
- Benevolent A.I.: Eli's drone who despite being Innocently Insensitive wants the best for him and is a very friendly machine.
- Big Damn Heroes: When it looks like Leo is about to get eaten by alligators, Squirtle, Mrs. Salinas' class and Ms. Malkin show up in the school bus and scare the gators away.
- Brick Joke:
- When Leo tells Squirtle he dreams of roaming free in the Everglades, Squirtle scoffs at the idea that Leo could survive in the untamed wilderness, saying he'll be reduced to surviving in a discarded beer can. When Squirtle goes to rescue Leo, one of the first places he looks is a discarded beer can, but there's just a mouse inside it.
- When Leo is depressed that he's near the end of his natural lifespan, Squirtle somewhat jokingly suggests he starts exercising to get healthier and live longer, like blinking a little more. Leo promptly does so and immediately passes out from exhaustion, but when he meets even older members of his species much later in the film, they make fun of his comparatively fast blinking.
- During the Good-Times Montage, One scene has Leo listening to Mia on the phone telling him about she learned that dangerous microorganisms can accumulate in open water. When Leo ends up stranded in the Everglades, he refuses to drink from a puddle alongside the other tuataras, specifically citing this earlier lesson.
- Squirtle tries to instil some "wisdom" on Anthony by telling him where babies come from, but messes up by assuming humans have the same reproductive strategy as turtles. This gets a punchline near the end of the movie, when Mrs. Salinas comes back from maternity leave with her newborn, and Anthony is confused why she only has one baby.Anthony: I guess she didn't bury the other eggs deep enough in the sand.
- Near the beginning of the movie, Mrs. Salinas is starting her yearly reading of Charlotte's Web. Squirtle bemoans the book because it always gets the kids teary-eyed, and crying is for weaklings(with Leo agreeing). When Ms. Malkin replaces her, one of the first things she does is suck up the book in her portable vacuum. At the end of the year, Ms. Malkin ejects the book from the vacuum and finishes it; Leo and Squirtle also get tearful at the ending, Squirtle loudest of everyone in the class (with snot bubbles coming out of his nose).
- When Leo realizes neither him or Squirtle knows how to do math, he wishes the school would move the class pets around to different grades so they can learn more stuff. He gets his wish at the end when they're transferred to a kindergarten class (on Ms. Malkin's request).
- Carnivore Confusion: The bugs Squirtle and Leo are given as food are clearly just as sapient as they are, but neither has any qualms about eating them throughout the movie (and the bugs don't seem to care either way). One of the reasons Leo hates the yearly reading of Charlotte's Web is that repeatedly hearing about the spider just gets him constantly hungry.
- Character in the Logo: The version of the logo seen in the trailers and the beginning of the film has a silhouette of Leo lounging in the "O".
- Class Clown: Cole H. One of his earliest scenes shows him balancing a pencil on his nose.
- Class Pet: The teaser sees Leo and Squirtle as they prepare for the arrival of the year’s new class.
- Cool Old Guy: Leo, a 74-year old lizard who gives each of the classmates an important Aesop.
- Covers Always Lie: Downplayed. The poster shows Leo riding in a remote-controlled toy car, but this only happens in a flashback clip that's less than five seconds long.
- Crack Defeat: Played for Laughs. Leo recalls how the class put on a wonderful and heartfelt show at the school Christmas recital. When Squirtle asks if they won, Leo says, no, the kindergarteners always win (they're too cute), and it cuts to the kindergarteners screaming, running around the stage, banging the instruments, and smashing their head on things.
- Crazy-Prepared: Ms. Malkin has both "Hug Away" repellent for keeping away extra-cuddly students like Mia, and "Entitled Spray (adult strength)" for spraying at especially rude parents.
- Cuddle Bug: Mia starts out this way due to her parents' divorce. After answering the teacher's question correctly, Mia runs up and hugs her so tightly that the teacher has to pry her off with the meter stick. Squirtle calls her "the human cling wrap".
- "Dear John" Letter: Leo helps Eli write a "Dear Drone" letter for his robotic drone to give him more space and independence and to not constantly hover over him to protect him (sometimes literally). The drone doesn't take it well when it reads the letter, attempting to throw itself in the trash, as well as attempting to drown its sorrows in ice cream.
- Deconstructed Trope: The "talking creature must be kept a secret" storyline is deconstructed in the trailer. While Leo initially wants no one to know that he can talk, he suddenly gains a lot of attention and respect for the fact that he can. Suddenly, he learns about life from the world he never got to see just as much as the children around him seem to learn from his own wisdom.
- Defrosting Ice Queen:
- Jayda starts out as typical spoiled Rich Bitch kid, but after opening up to Leo, she gets a lot more humble and openly friendly to the rest of the class, inviting everyone to her birthday while before she struggled to even invite a single person.
- Ms Malkin begins the movie as a Stern Teacher trying to instil values into the students via very strict Tough Love, but Leo eventually encourages her to be nicer and more accommodating towards the students to make them, and their parents, like her more and more willing to learn.
- Disney Acid Sequence: Jayda's dad has a musical number, "Extra Time", where the living room turns into a stage, and he's accompanied by dancing watches. The audience doesn't see the whole number, as the movie keeps cutting away to Leo and Jayda.
- Disney Death: Leo molts out of his skin, which makes the kids think he's died. Leo turns out to be perfectly fine.
- Drives Like Crazy: Ms. Malkin passes out and is unable to drive the class to the Everglades. Kabir steps in to do so, and he's pretty wild behind the wheel. Only intensified when they get to the Everglades, as a combination of his weight and the poor maintenance of the bus, combined with its abuse on the way there, prevents him from actually being able to stop.
- Escaped Animal Rampage: On Leo's suggestion, the kids free all the animals in the petting zoo at Jayda's birthday party, and they run wild in the yard. They appear later at the Everglades to help Leo go back home.
- Fictional Counterpart: If the students do exceptionally well in class, they're rewarded with a trip to Magic Land Park, which seems to be a legally distinct reference to Magic Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World (the movie is also set in Florida). Notably, just like Disney World, Magic Land Park is mentioned to have international locations.
- Fingore: Played for Laughs. The pony at Jayda's birthday part tells Leo his only real joy is occasionally biting one of his trainer's fingers off, who indeed only has two intact fingers on his left hand.
- Fire Alarm Distraction: Leo activates the fire alarm to provide an excuse for the school to evacuate and to allow him to come into contact with the 2nd Grade pets, who would be able to figure out his age.
- Gender-Blender Name: Justified. The African-American girl in the class is named Logan, which can be a girl's name, but is typically more associated with boys.
- Gentle Touch vs. Firm Hand: The 5th grade class's original teacher, Mrs. Salinas, was a much nicer and more lenient teacher, but she ends up going on a maternity leave early in the school year, and is replaced by the much grumpier and old-fashioned Ms. Malkin, who derides teaching tools like laptops or encouragement stickers. The students hate her, but it's shown later on she's tough on them because she genuinely wants them to reach their greatest potential and is deeply hurt when she overhears how much they can't stand her and that their progress over the school year was actually due to Leo's kinder help rather than her own stricter methods.
- Girl Posse: Jayda and her friends, Skyler and Logan.
- Good Behavior Points: The 5th grade has one of these boards, up until Ms. Malkin replaces Mrs. Salinas, who removes everyone's points. The board is later used as a makeshift sign-up sheet for taking out Leo for the weekend.
- Good Feels Good: Leo continuously delays his mission to escape into the wild because he quickly starts to enjoy helping out all the children in the class with their issues and mentoring them, and gets emotionally attached to them as a result.
- Good Thing You Can Heal: Leo is shown losing his tail twice as a gag, but, since he's a lizard, it just grows back later.
- Good-Times Montage: As Leo establishes friendships with all the students in the fifth grade class, there's a sequence showing all the various students he's helped going through self-improvement and building their confidence, while Leo gets to reap the benefits of helping others, although Squirtle is repeatedly shown being grouchy by the students liking Leo over him.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Squirtle exposes Leo's scam to the kids primarily because he's jealous that Leo is much better at connecting with them and gets all their love and attention, while they never think much of the turtle. He redeems himself when he gets the class to rescue Leo from the Everglades.
- Growing Up Sucks: This quote from Ms. Malkin sums up this trope best: ”Life gets more difficult the older we get. It’s called growing up.”
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Jayda, after Leo teaches her humility.
- Hammerspace: Eli's drone has the ability to pull any amount of random objects from it, including hand sanitizer, a face mask, a tape measure, a washcloth, and even a blow torch and welding helmet.
- Heartbreak and Ice Cream: The drone attempts to drown its sorrows in ice cream after reading Eli's "Dear John" Letter. Naturally, it fails to do so since it doesn't have a mouth.
- Held Back in School: Anthony was held back for two years.
- Helicopter Parents: An almost literal example. Eli's parents have a robotic drone literally hovering over him at all times to ensure he is well-groomed, healthy, and doesn't get into trouble, but the drone is way too pushy about it and overprotective, alienating Eli from his peers.
- I'm Standing Right Here: Jayda's father angrily rails about what a terrible substitute teacher Ms. Malkin is to the school principal, who says that he shouldn't really say that about someone who's right here, at which point the camera pans over to show Ms. Malkin sitting right next to the principal. Although her demeanour is no different from her default grouchiness, the principal has to stop her from spraying Jayda's dad with "Entitled Repellent".
- Informed Species: Leo is supposedly a tuatara, despite looking more like a strange iguana-chameleon-gecko hybrid. It's also unusual because tuataras are not kept as pets anywhere; the only thing that the film gets right is its extraordinarily long lifespan.
- Innocent Innuendo: When Leo tries to count up how old he is with his toes and fingers, but runs out, he asks Squirtle if there's anything else he can count with, but Squirtle replies, "I'd tell you, but there's kids around.". After a Beat moment where he imitates Groucho Marx, he says to the camera, "I was talking about his tail!".
- In-Universe Factoid Failure: Anthony immediately attempts to make fun of Kabir for transferring from New York by insulting the Patriots. Kabir points out that's New England's football team (New York has the Jets), and also that Anthony's shirt is backwards.
- I Take Offense to That Last One: When Mrs. Salinas introduces Leo and Squirtle to the class.Jayda: I am not touching those things.
Logan: Don't they eat, sleep and poo in the same place?
Squirtle: (points to Leo) Hey, I poo where he sleeps. - Liar Revealed: Leo tells every kid that he's a special magical lizard and only they can hear him talk (rather than all animals secretly being able to talk to anyone). It eventually gets harder to maintain the lie when every kid in class gives him a cellphone and several call him at the same time. Squirtle, fuelled by jealousy, exposes Leo to the class. The kids are disappointed in Leo, but eventually forgive him.
- Logo Joke: The bars surrounding the Netflix logo at the end of the trailers are a bright green.
- Lonely at the Top: Leo's advice to Jayda is that her haughty attitude only makes her isolated and miserable. It's better to acknowledge that she's not that great and take the pressure off herself so she can really connect with the people around her.
- Lovable Lizard: Leo the lizard is the main protagonist. The teaser shows that he is a slightly disgruntled old man, but he still gets along with children and wants to have fun. Subverted, as he's actually a tuatara (a lizard-like reptile, but not truly a lizard.)
- Madness Mantra: The teaser ends with Leo pacing around and muttering “Back to school… back to school…”
- Melancholy Musical Number: "When I Was Ten", after Ms. Malkin drops Leo off at the Everglades, and lies to the fifth-graders that he left on his own accord, the kids are disappointed because they never got to thank Leo for helping them get through, and lament through song about how things were easier when they were 10 and younger.
- Misplaced Wildlife: A few lizards who are the same species of Leo appear in the Everglades. Assuming they are tuataras, which live exclusively in New Zealand, this trope applies here.
- Mix-and-Match Critter: Leo is supposedly a tuatara, but he also has the coloration of an iguana, the tongue abilities of a chameleon and the can stick to walls and regenerate his tail like a gecko.
- Moody Trailer Cover Song: The teaser is set to a dramatic remix of "Beautiful Dreamer" by Stephen Foster, while the trailer is set to a dramatic remix of "More Than a Feeling".
- Morning Sickness: Mrs. Salinas throws up into a waste bin after seeing Cole H. flip his eyelids inside-out, immediately after Leo and Squirtle wonder whether she has a baby bump. She throws up again as she's saying good-bye to the students to go on maternity leave after she hears a kid had a peanut-butter and ham sandwich for lunch, but Ms. Malkin is quick enough to suck the vomit out of the air with her hand vacuum.
- Motor Mouth: Summer, until Leo teaches her to talk less and ask/listen more.
- Multipurpose Tongue: Leo possesses a chameleon-like tongue, which he uses to catch insects and other prey items from a distance. He also uses it for other things, like pulling the fire alarm at school and catching a picture frame from falling over.
- Nap-Inducing Speak: Summer tends to do this whenever she lets herself ramble on and on about things, to the point where anyone else listening to her rambling will try to tone her out, be bored out of their skulls, and fall asleep (even characters in a movie she's watching aren't immune). This gets weaponized in the climax, when Summer uses her rambling to bore a persistent alligator to the point of exhaustion.
- National Animal Stereotypes: The movie is set in Florida and the climax involves the Everglades National Park where the alligators, opossums, herons, Caribbean flamingo and even a cougar appears.
- Never Learned to Read: Implied via a one-off gag. In one brief scene, the fifth graders are shown helping teach the kindergarteners reading, except for Anthony, who is holding the book upside-down with a confused expression, and a kindergartener is teaching him reading.
- Never Smile at a Crocodile: In the climax that takes place at the Everglades, the congregation of alligators try to eat Leo, until Squirtle, kids from Mrs. Salinas' class and Ms. Malkin show up in the school bus, scaring the gators away. Interestingly, they're portrayed as regular predators rather than evil villains.
- New Kid Stigma: Kabir is the new kid in school, having moved from New York.
- Nice to the Waiter: Inverted. After a spontaneous music number with a number of anthropomorphic stopwatch people, Jayda's mom suggests to her husband that maybe he should tip the watches, but the best he offers is giving them a drink of water (from a bottle he already drank from). The stopwatches reject the water and get much more tired expressions after this and leave. Later, one of the stopwatches steals his wallet since he was never paid.
- No Antagonist: The film mainly revolves around Leo bonding with the children and helping them through their regular, relatable problems, without an active villain driving any conflicts. Even the overly stern Ms. Malkin turns out to merely be a sad, lonely woman who shows a much softer side when she's finally shown some kindness and empathy. Even the alligators that appear in the climax aren't villains, they're merely predators acting on their instincts...
- Non-Mammalian Hair: Done as a series of brief visual gags showing Leo in the past. He had a Porn Stache in 1976, hippie hair in 1969, and a curly spine on his head resembling a single sprig of hair when he was a baby.
- Non-Standard Character Design: Most of the humans are designed with semi-realistic proportions, except the kindergarteners, which have huge, spherical heads with massive fish eyes on the sides of their heads, and round teeth. It's lampshaded when there's a slideshow showing an image of Cole and Jayda as they looked in kindergarten, and immediately followed by how they look now.Principal Spahn: Isn't that something, how they've grown?
- Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Jayda's father is the richest and most important person in the local community, but as Leo points out, he is the most important person in what is basically a middle-class neighborhood, and he isn't really that important compared to other rich people.
- Obnoxious Entitled Housewife: Jayda's father is a gender-inverted example, He demands that Ms. Malkin be canned and replaced due to her actually making the kids do work, using his financial pull on the school and community to force the principal to do something about her. Ms. Malkin's reaction is to try and spray him with "Entitled Repellant (adult strength)".
- One-Steve Limit: Averted, as there are two Coles in Mrs. Salinas' class. The latter also ends up naming her newborn child Cole as well. When discussing this with Squirtle, Leo also recalls the "Justin avalanche of '91", implying that many children in that year's class were also called Justin.
- Opinion Flip Flop: Jayda suddenly likes Summer once she stops talking so much and asks about her, and Skyler suddenly likes Summer because Jayda does.
- Pass the Popcorn: Squirtle is scarfing down a bowl of bugs watching a particularly incensed parent-teacher-principal meeting.
- Pathetically Weak: Leo and Squirtle are so lazy that even blinking slightly more frequently is physically strenuous for them; Leo passes out from exhaustion after blinking just once. It also takes him several hours to crawl the length of a single room. It's partly justified because they're slow-moving reptiles, so their metabolisms are low and they don't move much to begin with. Leo later meets even older tuataras who laugh at his fast, youthful blinking.
- Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure: After Squirtle exposes Leo for lying to all the students, telling each of them that he was a magical lizard that one they could understand, when in reality all animals can (secretly) talk to any human, and also that Leo had been telling Squirtle about their confidential stories, they are saddened by this and abandon him, although they eventually realize they miss him and forgive him once it seems he's run away and Squirtle points out how much Leo helped all of them succeed.
- Pocket Dial: When Squirtle exposes the fact Leo can talk to anyone to the class, he plays it off mockingly as having accidentally butt-dialled one of the cellphones. Leo points out the transparency of the lie by reminding Squirtle that he doesn't even have a butt.
- However, in the Spanish dub, Leo instead retorts that Squirtle’s “whole life was an accident.” The turtle is offended both times.
- Predation Is Natural: The alligators in the climax trying to eat Leo aren't portrayed as intentionally malicious but just regular predators who see Leo as prey.
- Punny Name: The 2nd grade class pet is a rabbit recently renamed Cinnabun. He bemoans his corny name, but says it's least better than the ones that try and shoehorn the word "hare", like "Harey Potter", "Hare Brain", and "Hare Piece", and he goes off on a very long tangent listing every possible "hare" pun.
- Removable Shell: When Leo and Squirtle reunite with each other after the former got lost in Everglades, Squirtle removes his shell and wants to give it to Leo as gift. Leo however refuses. He also offhandedly mentions that he had to use a hand-me-down shell from his sister for sixteen years.
- Rhyming with Itself: Leo eventually cuts Summer off from her song describing her Motor Mouth tendency after she rhymed "speak" with "speak".Leo: It's just that last one wasn't even a rhyme, it was a repeat.
- Robot Buddy: In this case, a drone buddy. Eli has the drone caretaker who despite being Innocently Insensitive wants the best for him.
- Rousseau Was Right: All characters (including Ms. Malkin) have some sort of spark of decency tucked away somewhere in them. Even alligators that try to eat Leo at the climax are portrayed as normal predators rather than the outright villains.
- Running Gag: Leo freezing whenever startled or scared.
- Sad Clown: Squirtle immediately pegs Cole H. as "the class clown who secretly despises himself". Sure enough, Leo discovers later that Cole H.'s natural vocal range is very high and he's been intentionally deepening his voice because he doesn't want to be thought of as girly.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Jayda's dad is extremely wealthy and influential in the local community, using it to leverage special privileges for Jayda (that she doesn't need or even want), such as getting extra time on tests due to "permanent jet-lag".
- Sickly Neurotic Geek: Eli is seen as this by his parents, who tend to go overboard in trying to keep him safe.
- Shout-Out:
- Leo’s turtle roommate is named Squirtle. Leo himself might also be a case of this as his full name is Leonardo. Leo even lampshades this at one point, where he prefers to be referred as such as his full name is too "Ninja Turtle-y".
- Summer's family is watching Titanic (1997), where even Jack and Rose fall asleep due to Summer's rambling.
- When telling Summer to keep the fact that he can speak secret, Leo mentions ET The Extraterrestrial as an example of They Would Cut You Up. Ms. Malkin also mentions The Iron Giant and The Shape of Water when "reading" the note she claims Leo left the kids.
- A brief visual gag has Leo stumbling through a LEGO city like Godzilla, complete with the music suddenly turning in an orchestral imitation of the Godzilla theme.
- Leo also yells “Mother of Godzilla!” when he’s flung into the wall.
- Used during the montage going back through the decades to show how old Leo is, with many posters and other objects in the background clearly signaling what the pop culture of each flashback is. Such as a calendar with Justin Timberlake (back when he had curly hair), another calendar with ALF, a Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers lunchbox, another The Six Million Dollar Man lunchbox, and a The Pink Panther parody of Abbey Road Crossing poster.
- At Jayda's house, her little brother announces that he has painted the cat. The cat comes out green with brownish-yellow stripes, which makes him look more than a little like a miniature Battle Cat.
- The Slacker: Cole W. is implied to be this, as the opening number has him struggling to get up and get ready, with his father having to wake him.
- Small Name, Big Ego: Jayda's family clearly think they are more important than they really are, although Leo is quick to point out that by rich people's standards they are basically a Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond.
- Small Role, Big Impact: The two fathers that observe Leo during the parent-teacher conference. Their roles are minor but them pointing out how old Leo looks is what causes him to feel unfulfilled with his life and leading him to desire more with the little time he has left.
- Somewhere, a Herpetologist Is Crying:
- The plot is kicked off when Leo, a tuatara, overhears that he has a lifespan of up to seventy-five years, meaning that he, at seventy-four years old, could die very soon. In real life a tuatara's maximum lifespan is far beyond that (some individuals have been known to live for well over a century), and it turns out he really will live a lot longer than seventy-five, much to his relief. Also a tuatara isn't technically a lizard, but part of an offshoot of reptiles slightly more basal than lizards (of which the tuatara is the only living representative).
- Leo's identity as a tuatara is a little strange because this isn't a species kept as a pet anywhere (it's rare even in zoos), and is portrayed as native to Florida (they're native to New Zealand, and in fact a hot climate like Florida is actually fatal to them). He's also portrayed being bright green, like an iguana, and being omnivorous, rather than dull, greyish green and purely carnivorous. Leo is occasionally shown with a very long tongue that shoots out, like a chameleon (even though he explicitly states that he's not a chameleon, but strangely, he encounters a female of his species that can change colour), can walk on walls like a gecko, and is shown inflating a throat sac like a frog.
- Squirtle removes his shell a few times with no problem and even mentions it's a hand-me-down from his sister. In real life, removing a turtle from its shell would kill said turtle, since the shell is fused with its spine and ribs.
- Spoiler Cover: The poster above has Squirtle riding Eli's drone. This doesn't happen until the third act, where he contacts the drone to save Leo by following Eli and the bus.
- Stalker Shrine: Ms. Malkin has no family or friends, but she does have a big shrine to the school gym teacher in her house, which includes his whistle, one of his running shoes, and even his protective groin cup. She nervously tells Leo that those photos are none of his business, and Leo agrees that he never saw anything.
- Stealing the Credit: After the class wins a history fair presentation that nets them all a trip to an amusement park, Ms. Malkin decides to take all the credit for the children's self-improvement, when it was really Leo who did most of it, and dumps Leo in the Everglades so no one finds out or even sees him again. She does eventually regret her decision and helps the students rescue him.
- Stern Teacher: Ms. Malkin, Mrs. Salinas' substitute teacher who prefers teaching the old fashioned way (such as replacing the personal laptops with gigantic textbooks)
- Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids: The robotic drone following Eli around is of at least human intelligence, it can talk, has retractable arms strong enough to easily pick up a person and throw an alligator into the clouds, can project a Holographic Terminal, has Hammerspace that holds any number of objects (including a blowtorch), even gets depressed and tries to gorge on ice cream when Eli says he wants some personal space from it, and starts forming a one-sided romantic attraction to Squirtle at the end.
- Swallowed a Fly: As a gag during the animated credits, Leo swallows a fly while riding on the Dragon Coaster. Of course, since he's a reptile, he actually likes it.
- Talking Animal: It's established in this universe all animals are of human intelligence and can talk (or at least, all vertebrates can, as insects aren't seen to talk at any point, but they're still shown to be intelligent), but have an unspoken rule to never talk to humans. Leo accidentally reveals he can talk to Summer, but finds there's a lot of benefits that come with it and continues to do so with every other kid in the class, because it feels good to help them.
- Talking the Monster to Death: In the climax of the movie, when all other means to defeat a persistent alligator fail, Summer talks and rambles on to it to the point where it collapses from boredom.
- Tempting Fate: One of the older tuataras in the Everglades tells Leo their species naturally lives until 110 years old, unless eaten by alligators. Immediately after hearing this and being overjoyed he still has a long life ahead of him, Leo runs into a huge group of hungry alligators.
- That Poor Cat: Jayda's younger brother dyes the family pet cat grass-green.
- They Would Cut You Up: Discussed. Whenever each of the kids that bring Leo home discover that he could talk, he warns them of not telling their parents that he talks as he'll be killed "like E.T.".
- There Was a Door: Played for Laughs. When all the animals escape the birthday party, they all choose to crash through the mansion's windows rather than through the doors the kids open specifically for them.
- Token Rich Student: Jayda. She lives in a Big Fancy House and her father is a cosmetologist who’s rich and influential enough to throw her lavish parties and secure extra privileges for her.
- Tormented Teacher: A Running Gag is showing the kindergarten teacher struggling and failing to get the extremely rambunctious kindergarteners under control. At one point she's disappointed that the fire alarm was just a false alarm and the school isn't on fire (because that means she has to go back to class). And then at the end, Ms. Malkin is made next year's kindergarten teacher...
- Trademark Favorite Food: One of the students, Zane, is repeatedly shown snacking on Cheetos, resulting in cheesy fingers. This comes up repeatedly as a gag, such as Eli's drone incinerating a bag of Cheetos because it was manufactured in a facility that also processes nuts, and a wild opossum licking Zane's hand to get the cheese crumbs while he isn't paying attention.
- Urine Trouble: During one of the song numbers, Leo wishes he had the chance to eat algae straight from the sea instead of just lettuce soaked in Squirtle's pee. Squirtle isn't sympathetic.
- Vocal Dissonance: It turns out Cole H. is actually deliberately deepening his voice, and his real one is much higher-pitched. He feels ashamed about this until Leo points out its musical potential.
- Vomit Discretion Shot: Every time Mrs. Salinas vomits, the actual vomit isn't shown.
- Wacky Cravings: Downplayed. In the beginning of the movie, Leo and Squirtle wonder if Mrs. Salinas is pregnant after noticing her slightly larger belly. Mrs. Salinas confiscates Zane's bag of Cheetos (due to snacks not being allowed in class) and tells him she'll hold on to it, but immediately scarfs down the whole bag and then licks the tissue she uses to wipe Zane's cheese dusted hands. Then she takes another student's lunch and eats it in front of him (much to his silent dismay).Leo: Yup, having a baby.
- Wanting Is Better Than Having: Leo decides he wants to spend the remainder of his life roaming out in the wilderness instead of as a class pet, but quickly finds he actually enjoys helping out all the kids through their problems and repeatedly gives up opportunities to escape. When he actually gets to the wilderness, he finds it's not as great as he thought and quickly starts missing the kids. By the end of the movie, he's happy to continue being a class pet (and finding out he's going to live a lot longer than he thought also helps).
- What You Are in the Dark: On the birthday party of the third child, Jayda, Leo is riding on a bubble animal seconds away from freedom, but the kids are worried that they can’t find him. He has a choice to either fulfill his selfish dream of living in the Everglades, or sacrifice it to continue imparting his decades of wisdom to help the rest of the class. He pops the bubble animal and heads back, thereby choosing the latter.
- Weather-Control Machine: Played for Laughs. In the science fair, Mia has a presentation on weather that includes a device that somehow changes the weather outside from sunny, to thundering, to snowing, instantly.
- Wham Line: As Leo meets Jayda's party animals in the Everglades, he confides with them about his experience with the fifth grade students, and how he believes his efforts to help them through the year backfired and fears his funeral will be worse than Hammy #3 (a deceased hamster who's funeral was unenthusiastic). But then some local older lizards chime in:Old Lizard #1 Why are you talking about your funeral?
Leo: 'Cause it's coming any day! I'm almost 75 years old!
Old Lizard #2: So what? We live to like, 110. - What Are Records?: Ms. Malkin's history lessons cover topics much more thoroughly than Mrs. Salinas did. When she gets to the Stamp Act
, Leo is confused about what a stamp even is. - Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: As a brief gag, TJ accidentally helps score a goal in a game of soccer at school, despite not paying attention at all (because he's playing his Nintendo Switch on the field), simply because the ball bounced off his head into the other team's goal.
- Win-Win Ending: Since the film has No Antagonist, all the characters get what they want by the end. All the students get past their personal vices with Leo's help, grow closer to one another, and graduate to middle school, while Leo gets a new lease on life, now that he knows he isn't about to die and likes helping people. Even the grouchy Ms. Malkin turns out to be not so bad and earns a permanent teaching position at the school.
- Wise Old Turtle: Subverted. Squirtle (who is just somewhat younger than Leo) tries to give Anthony a pep talk the way Leo would, but screws up in telling the boy where babies come from (human babies are not hatched from clutches of eggs).
- Your Days Are Numbered: The story is kicked off when Leo learns that he's on the last year of his natural lifespan and realizes he hasn't done anything of worth in his whole life. Subverted later when he discovers he actually has a couple decades left in his species' normal lifespan.
