Posted in: Disney, Kaitlyn Booth, Movies, Review | Tagged: Lilo & Stitch

Lilo & Stitch Review: Cute Visuals But a Story With No Emotional Punch

Several creative decisions made early on make a lot of elements of Lilo & Stitch unsteady, and by the time the third act rolls around, it collapses the same way Lilo's house does.

Lilo & Stitch starts off okay, but some baffling creative decision that mess up the stakes and jumping the shark in the third act you're left with a film that somehow sucks the emotion out of this infamous emotional film.

Director: Dean Fleischer Camp
Summary: A lonely Hawaiian girl befriends a runaway alien, helping to mend her fragmented family.

The Strange Trajectory Of The Disney Live-Action Remakes

The Disney live-action remake journey has been a strange one, to say the least. For a hot minute there, it looked like they were on an upward trajectory where the sky was the limit. It helped that they were really starting to pick up speed during 2017-2019 when the box office lost its bloody mind. While things slowing down was likely expected, something shifted during the pandemic, and it seemed like people were quite over these things. Perhaps it was the accessibility everyone had to the animated classics, a lot of free time, and that was all that was needed to remind people that these hold up.

Since then, they have been struggling at the box office, with Snow White feeling like the final nail in the coffin. Lilo & Stitch is the last hope for this corner of the Disney machine to continue turning, and while it remains a valiant effort to recapture whatever magic made those initial films connect with audiences, it also brings some new issues to the table. There are some big, creative decisions here that really hurt the entire film. Between the merch sales, the early box office, and rumblings from Disney saying they are already eyeing a sequel, the quality of this film might not matter. (Or maybe it will, just ask the Aladdin sequel.)

Stitch's design is one of the big things this film manages to get right. He looks pretty great here, and they have managed to take something designed to be animated and place it into the real world so that he looks like he could exist. It's not perfect, but there isn't going to be any version of a character like this that is going to be. They walked the line between realism and cartoon, so we're not getting something horrific or out of the uncanny valley. Maia Kealoha as Lilo is also fantastic. She's adorable and frustrating in a way that only kids can be. The fact that she does so much of this movie with a character that isn't real is a real testament to her skill as a young actress. It's something many adults couldn't pull off, but kids have imagination, so she might have had an easier time than any of the adults around her.

The adults around her are all fine. Syndey Agudong does what she can with a version of Nani that might be more frustrating to watch than Lilo is. They have introduced some new characters that don't make much of an impact and have completely changed the motivations of others. Everyone does the best they can with what is given to them. Billy Magnussen as Pleakley might have the best physical comedy in the entire film, while Zach Galifianakis is nearly unrecognizable as Jumba. And Chris Sanders is back to voice Stitch because literally, who else could they get?

Lilo & Stitch Makes Some Weird Changes That Make Everything Worse

So what makes Lilo & Stitch fall apart? Several creative decisions made early on make a lot of elements of this film unsteady, and by the time the third act rolls around, it collapses the same way Lilo's house does. The biggest change they made and the one that ultimately kills the entire film, the stakes, and any emotional investment you might have had, is how they handle Lilo and Nani navigating guardianship. We have a new social worker character, and, bafflingly, the film spends a decent portion of time advocating for the foster care system and DHS and how it won't be so bad for Lilo and Nani, no problems at all. Maybe in 2002, when the original film wore those sort of rose colored glasses over DHS and how everything is fine in the foster care system, but that is not how things go now. When you take away that stake of separating the sisters, you lose a fundamental piece of the film, which has a ripple effect throughout the entire movie.

Suddenly, the theme of "ohana means family and family means no one is left behind or forgotten" falls flat when the primary tension and emotional core of the film isn't there anymore. It leads to some big changes throughout the third act, specifically, and even more so with the decision to take away any sense of nuance so we can have a villain whose motives are very easy to understand. Or, maybe it's so they don't have to fully animate a third alien character. To get into all of the ways the third act falls apart would be getting into spoilers, but the core problem comes from that slight change in the dynamic between the sister and DHS, and culminates in a decision at the very end that will make some fans absolutely livid.

Lilo & Stitch seemed to be walking that line of being faithful to the original while also trying to do something new. Director Dean Fleischer Camp knows how to tug on our heartstrings; we haven't stopped crying over a shell with shoes on, thank you very much, but any tears shed here feel like they only exist because you know the context from the original film. If you saw this film without knowing anything about it, would that scene in the hammock make you cry? Unclear, and while Disney has certainly done worse in the live-action remake category, this doesn't feel like the one that will justify continuing to remake more films in the future.

Perhaps children who see this property for the first time will find themselves captivated by Lilo & Stitch. However, no one with a fully developed prefrontal cortex can ignore the fact that these films fail to justify their existence, somehow always miss the point, and make everything worse. It would be fascinating if it weren't so depressing.

Lilo & Stitch

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Review by Kaitlyn Booth

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6.5/10

Lilo & Stitch starts off okay, but some baffling creative decision that mess up the stakes and jumping the shark in the third act you're left with a film that somehow sucks the emotion out of this infamous emotional film.

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