‘Lilo & Stitch’ is more Disney cosplay
Latest remake is serviceable but loses what made the original special.
A fairly good test for how much you’ll enjoy the new Lilo & Stitch likely comes down to which title character you’re most invested in.
If you’re one of the many kids – or Disney adults – who loves Stitch, the mischievous blue alien, rest assured that you’ll get what you’re paying for. The film is packed with scenes of Stitch causing mayhem, breaking things, drooling and babbling in a voice that sounds like Cookie Monster on helium. But if you’re a fan of Lilo, the pint-sized terror who made voodoo dolls to punish the mean girls, you’re probably better staying home and turning on Disney+.
Of course, the real winners might be those with no familiarity of the 2002 movie at all who walk into Dean Fleischer Camp’s film completely cold. They’ll likely find a perfectly cute family movie, unaware how much of it was done with more heart, wit and creativity two decades earlier.
If you’ve seen the original, you’re probably okay to skip to the next paragraph, since this new film follows the original nearly beat for beat. Lilo (Maia Kealoha) is a 6-year-old living in Hawaii with her sister, Nani (Sydney Agudong) after the death of their parents. As Nani struggles to keep a social worker (Tia Carrere) at bay, Lilo adopts a strange blue dog from the local shelter. But, of course, it’s not a dog. It’s an alien who’s been designed only to destroy and who, in the film’s opening sequence, escaped his intergalactic prison. He’s being pursued by his devious creator, Jumba (Zach Galifianakis), and the Earth-obsessed scientist Pleakley (Billy Magnussen). In their normal forms, Jumba is a multi-eyed lump and Pleakley looks like a taller, skinnier Mike Wazowski. But for what I’m sure are budgetary reasons, the remake finds a way to disguise them on Earth so they look like Galifianakis and Magnussen. Hijinks ensue.
The 2002 animated film was, along with 2000’s Emperor’s New Groove, a zippy departure from Disney’s more ambitious epics. Directed by Chris Sanders and Dean Debois – who went on to direct How to Train Your Dragon, which has its own live-action remake opening in a few weeks – it mixed a sweet heart with a more subversive comedic style. Stitch started the film as a purely anarchic, destructive creation who later found himself changed by his found family. But Lilo was equally outside the Disney mold; while still precocious, she was also a brat – in the opening scene, she bit one of her friends – and could be deeply weird, such as when she explains that she feeds fish peanut butter instead of tuna because she doesn’t want to be “an abomination.”
Directed by Dean Fleischer Camp, who helmed the wonderful animated/live action hybrid Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, the new version sticks to the same plot but sands off the rough edges that made it so special. Lilo gets into trouble, but she’s missing her weird streak. She hangs out at the local resort and has a temper, but the film is quick to note that very little of this is her fault. She’s cute and rambunctious, but not really troubled or strange, which makes the dialogue alluding to the family as being broken ring hollow. Stitch is largely unchanged, although the fact that most people are now so familiar with the character makes his appetite for destruction and mischief less fun. The joy of the original is in how a character that truly feels chaotic finds a soul; because Stitch is now one of the more popular plushies and Disney characters, there’s never a moment in which we’re not fawning all over him or thinking “that’s our Stitch.” The film also removes a subplot in which The Ugly Duckling causes Stitch to realizes his own loneliness and need, taking out a crucial part of the film and making his turn to model citizen feel obligatory instead of earned1.
It’s easy to argue that this new film should be judged on its own merits. And I’ll admit that it’s well made. Camp proved with Marcel that he can integrate live action and animation well. The actors are fine, and it’s always fun to watch Stitch cause mayhem. It’s working from a sweet core, and the film’s final scene hit the right emotional buttons. I can imagine someone who’s never seen the original walking out of this very pleased.
But like every other Disney remake, this is directed at those who know and love the original, and rather than shake things up, it just wants to give them what they liked before. The animated characters all look exactly like their 2D counterparts. Lines of dialogue are repeated verbatim. The early gag where Stitch sends something offensive and an alien is so shocked they vomit bolts and gears? Yup, it’s there. The entire film is made for an audience staring back expectantly for the characters to just do the thing. And so what felt fresh and funny two decades ago is now just familiar; the special sauce that made Lilo & Stitch so beloved is gone and in its place is just another bit of content. The actors and animators aren’t doing anything original; it’s Disney cosplay.
The joy of animation is in its color and fluidity. Stitch is perfectly acceptable as a CGI character, but Pleakely and Jumba are more off-putting when seen in three dimensions. Magnussen is fun at capturing Pleakely’s excessive excitement and energy over something as pedestrian as a sneeze, but I don’t understand why anyone would hire Zach Galifianakis and largely have him play it straight. And one of the most memorable things about the original was its beautiful watercolor backgrounds; like every other one of the Disney remake, Lilo & Stitch seems to forget how much beauty and vibrancy is lost when you switch from animation to real life. Hawaii’s beautiful, yes; animated, watercolor Hawaii is even better2.
The new Lilo & Stitch also adds two new characters, for better and worse. I understand wanting to include Carrere, who voiced Nani in the original, but her social worker just adds to a crowded movie. In the original, Ving Rhames voiced Cobra Bubbles, an intimidating presence who also had a secret government background. I understand that the film wants to avoid the stereotype of the cold-hearted social worker, but I don’t understand why the film still includes Bubbles, now a CIA agent investigating Stitch’s crash, who just shows up randomly and leaves actor Courtney B. Vance with little to do but wait around for his Disney check to clear. I do, however, appreciate the addition of Amy Hill as Tutu, a next-door neighbor who serves as a grandmotherly figure for Nani and Lilo. It’s a nice expansion of the story’s found family theme that also provides a new solution that gives Nani a better ending that the original film probably did.
I’ll admit that Lilo & Stitch is far from the worst of the Disney remakes; Camp retains enough heart so that it doesn’t feel as soulless as Aladdin or The Lion King, and it’s nicer to look at than the digital slop of Beauty and the Beast. Kids won’t complain; my daughter laughed and sobbed at all the right moments. But it never successfully argues for its own existence or does anything memorable enough for me to consider rewatching it over its superior predecessor. When kids say “I want to see Lilo & Stitch,” saying “we have Lilo & Stitch at home” is still the better option.
The scene in the original where Stitch heads into the woods and cries out “I’m lost” is one of its most powerful moments, and this new version has nothing comparable.
Unrelated, but the film also has much less of Lilo’s Elvis obsession, probably due to music licensing issues, and while I’m not the world’s biggest Elvis fan, it’s another bit of the original’s character that’s been lost.