Adam Sandler voices an aged lizard who wants to escape to the Everglades but finds himself dispensing life advice to fifth graders in the classroom where he’s one of the resident pet reptiles in “Leo,” an animated comedy that’s passably animated but generally unfunny.

The life lessons “Call me Leo (not Leonardo), that’s less ‘Ninja Turtley” passes on — often in song — include “You’re not that great” and “Don’t cry, crying’s for weaklings,” which is what passes for “against the grain” parenting these days.

A missing lesson in this film packed with alumni of “Saturday Night Live” and Sandler offspring is that success is about being born to or friends with somebody famous, which is a lot more important than whatever else you learn in fifth grade.

But since one of Sandler’s kids is the stand-out voice performer here, we won’t dwell on the cronyism/nepotism/tribalism that has informed much of career, outside of the odd break from character.

This Netflix production follows Leo and his pal/fifth grade “pet” partner Squirtle the Turtle (Bill Burr) after Leo hears a parent mention the life expectancy of his sort of lizard — 75 years.

Leo’s been in Fort Myers Elementary for 74 years and counting, and he’s facing his mortality, the fact that he never got to see the Everglades and the fact that despite decades in the classroom, he never learned Fort Myers is in Southwest Fla, on the coast, not “Central Florida,” as he says.

He blinks slowly and walks slowly and lives for the bugs fed to him or that cross his tongue’s kill radius in the terrarium he calls home. But now, as a no-nonsense, computer-eschewing, dream-killing “substitute” (Cecily Strong) teacher takes over from the pregnant and popular Mrs. Salinas (Allison Strong), Leo feels his time running out.

The teacher’s determination to teach these kids “discipline” and “responsibility” by getting one to take a classroom animal home each weekend gives Leo his chance. He’ll make a break for it. Then that first self-absorbed chatterbox (Sadie Sandler, on the money) takes him home, accidentally discovers he can talk, and he’s handing out life advice.

Maybe stop talking so much, “ask a question” in conversation and show an interest in somebody else for one. You know, “listen.”

Other kids face “common sense” advice about vanity, insecurity about their looks (being as hairy as dad), their divorcing parents, their practice of bullying, which isn’t making them popular, all sorts of things kids today face.

Even the eyebrow-raising pearls of wisdom are pretty tame. Alas, so are the one-liners, the comic situations and complications and the perils of the “real” Everglades.

The film, with three credited directors and three credited screenwriters, begins with promise as Leo and Squirtle instantly size-up kids’ as “types” on the first day of school — “parents going through divorce,” “first child” in a family (spoiled), born bully, born mean girl, “cheese doodle kid” and the like.

But those insights turn out to be the comic highlights of the picture, with “Mother of Godzilla!” par for the course among the punchlines, and the animation only occasionally crossing the line from static to slapshticky.

Sandler fans will find more to cling to here than I did, as I long ago lost all patience for his lazy brand of “moron” comedy packed with cronies and relatives. Sandler trying on a funny voice that isn’t funny, and then singing in it isn’t exactly “new.” What’s novel about it is how he’s lost the knack for inventing amusing, offbeat characters and funny things for them to say (he co-wrote the script) or sing.

Rating: PG, innuendo, bits of “rude humor”

Cast: The voices of Adam Sandler, Bill Burr, Cecily Strong, Allison Strong, Jason Alexander, assorted Sandler children and that Schneider fellow.

Credits: Directed by Robert Marianetti, Robert Smigel and David Wachtenheim, scripted by Robert Smigel, Adam Sandler and Paul Sado. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:41