“Leo”, an animated musical family movie, starts in Mrs. Salinas’s fifth grade classroom. This classroom has two class pets Leo the tuatara and Squirtle the turtle. To start off the year the school had a parent-teacher conference where the parents found out that Mrs. Salinas is pregnant and taking some time off and Leo found out that he has “one year left to live”. Leo is devastated, thinking of all the things he’s never done in his life and regretting not going out. The movie was released in October and is currently streaming on Netflix.
With their teacher gone they get a substitute teacher, Ms. Malkin, who is scary and strict. Everything is changing now that there is a new teacher, Ms. Malkin is a very traditional teacher and assigns the students to take a class pet home. One of the students steps up and takes Leo home. Leo is as happy as he is planning to escape to live the “last year of his life” the best he can. Against his plans he couldn’t escape and the student caught him talking when nobody is supposed to know. Leo and the student got close and agreed to not tell anyone that he’s a talking tuatara. This kept on going with the kids thinking they are the only ones that know that he talks.
With the kids focusing in school better with Leo the parents and teachers automatically assume that Ms. Malkin must be the cause for it, they start seeing her as a great teacher. Ms. Malkin is now extremely happy knowing she might get a full-time job as a teacher if she keeps doing well. But then she finds out that the students are doing well from the help of Leo, not from her. She now is mad and takes Leo home but they start getting along and root for the kids best. Squirtle on the other hand is jealous of Leo and tells the kids that Leo has been talking to everyone and not just them like they were told.
Ms. Malkin told Leo that she would help them reconcile the next day at the history project the kids were competing in. At the competition the kids won and the principal announced that Ms. Malkin got teacher of the year. With all the compliments, she got scared that they would go away if they knew that these accomplishments were not because of her but because of Leo. She decided to hide him and take him somewhere far away. Then she went back and told the kids that he must have run away and threatened Squirtle to keep his mouth shut.
The kids won a trip to Magic Land Park for winning the history competition and left for it, while Squirtle was regretting what he did and decided to tell the kids what Ms. Malkin did. In the end they found Leo and all learned that he will not be dying any time seen, he’s in his “tween” years and gets to live past a hundred years.
