Lilo & Stitch

Whoever was in charge of the creative direction of this movie needs to disappear

5.0 - Apologies, this may be my longest review I have ever written.

Lilo & Stitch (2002) is one of my all time favorite movies. Not animated movies, or Disney movies, just favorite movies.

The gorgeous animation, the snappy comedy, the perfectly balanced story that is accessible to children & adults alike & provides genuine heart & emotion - all near perfect.

This remake messed up. It’s a classic “I’m not mad, I’m disappointed” situation for me. My complaints here are the same as many others’, but I do think I have a unique perspective as a foster parent.

Sometimes giving up guardianship rights is truly the best option for the child. That’s really hard for people to hear or accept. But it’s just the truth. So I have an empathy & understanding of that angle in this story. It’s not wrong, but this is the wrong place to tell that point of view & story.

Yes, the lack of Gantu & the shift in the villain, the cuts of some jokes, the change in the silly disguises of Pleakley & Jumba, the lack of Jumba’s accent - those are all minor annoyances. If that’s what ruined this for you, that’s valid & I’m sorry for that. But this falls short the most in the understanding of the message of Ohana from the original.

The beauty of the original story is that no matter what happened, how brutal & unfair life treated the Pelekai sisters, they were still sisters, a bond nothing could break, and they built their own Ohana together. At the end of the story family included three aliens, a CIA agent, & a couple neighbors but that’s more than enough because they had each other.

As I was starting to get at before, I don’t disagree that sometimes it is the right thing to say “hey, I cannot do this,” & let family or neighbors step in to help. But in this specific story, making the government the hero that steps in to say we’re going to place Lilo with a neighbor is the wrong message. When you layer on the statistics of reunification of minorities & indigenous children, an argument could be made it’s an almost dangerous message. And it “adultifies” the underlying message in this story in a way that is an injustice to its source. Insurance needs, & guardianship & visitation rights, & “what our parents would have wanted” is not accessible messaging to the kids in the core demographic. And then to not only take Nani away but to send her to the mainland to study, truly removing her from her sister physically, is an extra level of separation that really hurts the narrative.

Beyond the core narrative issue around Ohana, there are a few moments that were actually critical to the story as well that I think Disney really screwed up in cutting & I haven’t seen much mention of, so I need to call those out.

The first, is cutting back the Pudge sandwich conversation. It’s crucial to know Pudge controls the weather in Lilo’s mind & that her parents died in a rainy night car crash. That’s why her actions at the beginning were important to her, she couldn’t miss feeding Pudge again because something bad would happen. Then to end up allowing the “something bad” of losing her sister as her parental figure kind of hurts. All in all, a lot of Lilo’s personality quirks were changed or cut to make her less autistic coded & more of just a troublemaker and that’s a disappointment as well.

It’s also a disappointment they cut the reading of The Ugly Duckling because that moment defines Stitch’s understanding of family & how he fits into his new one. Even though he’s different, he can still find where he belongs. His end speech before he almost goes back to space hits a little less effectively.

Lastly, removing the nod that Lilo officially adopted Stitch, has paperwork with her name on it, & Stitch leaving would have been theft is a disappointing removal because again it takes some of the heroism away from the main characters & puts it back on the various governments. Now the Galactic Alliance is doing the family a favor instead of honoring Lilo’s agency, & agency as a child is so much more important than is typically given credit in these stories.

I do want to quickly give credit a couple places. Maia Kealoha was a delight & I hope she can get more roles soon. They still did a good job highlighting Hawaii as a whole. It’s still a well shot scenic movie. I know it’s not watercolor painted & as bright, but there was clearly an effort to highlight the island and its people. Second, they finally did a decent job still giving the animated characters a touch of their animated cuteness. In contrast to The Lion King’s or The Jungle Book’s or The Little Mermaid’s animals that look too lifelike & are missing the playfulness, Stitch still has a lot of that character & cute charm, & most of the other aliens are still fun.

Overall, don’t think it completely failed. I understand Disney not wanting to do soulless shot for shot remakes & I don’t fault them for trying to change the story a bit to provide their creators some creative license & their audiences something new. It still had some of the core elements of the characters & tried to still provide a heartfelt story. In total, I think it just missed the mark. I don’t put the a blame on the shortcomings on the directing, or animation teams, or even the writers to a degree - but on Disney brass for still not re-evaluating if this live action remake cash grab process is the right direction for the studio & how they want to be viewed, & what kind of work they want to be providing audiences. But sadly, I think the money will keep talking.

They removed a lot of scenes from the main film like Gantu's presence which is really a shame. My session was full of kids who didn't know how to behave

Super nostalgic to watch a new Lilo and Stich but still had new aspects to keep it interesting.

Lilo and stitch is my childhood, it brings me to those old times when i just had cd of this movies and series and i could watch it repeatedly. This movie wasn’t super duper good but i still enjoyed and loved it. It was like 6 out of 10 but still enjoyed

Love love love always have loved stitch