Shawn Mendes is Lyle Crocodile

A few months ago, Shawn Mendes announced that he was putting his Wonder The World Tour on hold to take a mental health break. Great, I thought. Mendes, who is only 23 years old, has been continuously creating hit songs, No. 1 selling albums these past years.

Handwritten, Illuminate, Shawn Mendes and Wonder are albums that all made it to the top. We also love his songs like Stitches, In My Blood, If I Can’t Have You and those collabs like Monster with Justin Bieber and Señorita with Camila Cabello.

Mental health is no laughing matter, so I thought it was nice of Mendes to give up his tour and to inform his followers why. Something like this should also influence the public to take mental health seriously.

However, that did not mean that we would not be hearing from Mendes while is on a break from touring. This is because he has taken on the movies and plays the lead role in the musical comedy Lyle, Lyle Crocodile.

Lyle, Lyle Crocodile is a popular children’s book from the ‘60s by the American writer Bernard Waber. It banks on the idea of having a pet animal. If not a dog or a cat, why not a crocodile. So there is this crocodile named Lyle who lives in the attic of a brownstone on 88th Street in New York City.

Unlike the usual reptile of the swamp who can devour humans in a single gulp and who ends up as expensive bags or footwear, Lyle is sweet and nice, always helpful and infects everybody with his sunshiny nature. His only problem is he cannot speak. But Lyle can sing. And beautifully at that.

This is where Mendes comes in. Lyle, Lyle Crocodile is now a motion picture. It is directed by Will Speck and Josh Gordon. It uses a mix of CGI and live action and has a cast of major stars.

Javier Bardem of Being the Ricardos as the sleazy wannabe star Hector P. Valenti, Constance Wu of Crazy Rich Asians as a writer, who wants to be a good mother, Scoot McNairy of Narcos as her husband and Winslow Fegley of Nightbooks as their loner son.

And then, there is Lyle. No live crocodile was used during filming. He is all computer generated but when he sings it is with the voice of Shawn Mendes.

The famous award-winning team of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul was recruited to provide the songs for Lyle, Lyle Crocodile. These guys are also behind the music of La La Land, Dear Evan Hansen and The Greatest Showman.

Given those credits, it is already clear to see the wondrous creativity that went into the songs used in the movie. These form the heart of the picture. They are fun, sad or joyous and are always heartfelt. Mendes sings all of them. And like Lyle he does them beautifully.

Given the number of sound enhancers now available in the recording studio, it often happens that songs come out as overproduced. This is too much of a good thing really and Mendes has at times been subject to that. Not this time though. Beautiful is an overused word but I will use it again here. Because that is just how Mendes sounds as Lyle.

The soundtrack includes Take a Look at Us Now, a song-and-dance duet with Bardem who sings for the first time here; Rip Up the Recipe which Lyle performs with Wu, who it turns out, can sing; the happy number Top of the World, a tribute to Lyle’s Broadway dream; the hip-hop-inspired Bye Bye Bye and the wistful Carried Away, where Mendes is at his best. By the way, he also contributed one of his originals, Heartbeat, which is played in the closing credits.

Lyle, Lyle Crocodile opens on Oct. 12 in theaters. Watch it. I guarantee you will not go looking for a singing crocodile for a pet but you will fall in love with Mendes and the music.