Lilo & Stitch is my favorite animated Disney movie. I love it for it’s absurdity and for the themes about family and finding the right people to fit in with. And for the Hawaiian locale. I went into the remake knowing it would likely never live up to what came before, and that made it easier for me to just sit back and enjoy this new take.
The story is the same. After Lilo’s parents have died, her older sister, Nani, struggles with being a sudden parent to a willful child when Stitch is marooned on their island when his spaceship crashes. Stitch uses Lilo as a human shield to protect himself from the aliens trying to catch him and Lilo finds herself a new friend. Her only friend. They strike up a kinship when they both need it the most only to have the real world crash down around them when a social worker decided to remove Lilo from her sister’s care.
What this movie gets right is the dynamic between Lilo and Nani. The two both have a lot of growing up to do and they are all the other has. This new version also adds to who Nani is. She is a wonderful surfer and was accepted into college before her parents’ deaths. She has given all that up to be a parent for Lilo, and it makes her struggle as she fails even more heartbreaking.
This film also adds a loving neighbor who happens to be the parent of the boy how has a crush on Nani. This neighbor serves as occasional babysitter, moral support, and the maternal character Nani and Lilo lost when their mother died. She also gives a better real world solution to Nani’s issue of how to care for Lilo. At the end, she’s there for a good reason so that Nani can go to college like she originally planned.
Tia Carrere comes back as the social worker. In the animated version, she voiced Nani’s character. Here, she is a woman who gives Nani a way forward to keep her sister in her care even as Nani struggles with doing so. Cobra Bubbles is still a character in the new version, but just as a CIA agent. He does not double as social worker in the new film and I like that change. It always bothered me that he went from CIA agent to social worker in the animated version. Again, suspension of disbelief was more believable in the 2002 version.
They also did away with the edited out storyline from the original where Lilo took photographs of tourists because they were always taking photos of her. It was her way of getting back at them for seeing her as a tourist attraction instead of a human being. Most of that was gone by the time the film was released in 2002, but you can see vestiges of it with Lilo taking photos of the tourists on the beach. None of that made it into this new film and I’m more than okay with it. Given all that goes on in this, that was a lot to say for a six year old girl who was already going through so much. Instead, the photographs and albums of her parents and sister are what are important to Lilo which fits the themes of family the movie carries much better than her photographing tourists.
Stitch is still as crazy as ever, but some of the whimsy is lost in translation with the CGI as they try to make him as real as possible while also portraying him as a cartoon. That is where the animation succeeded more – in the suspension of disbelief. The absurdity of these aliens walking freely around a Hawaiian island without causing a mass panic is what made the first film so funny. In the new version, not so much. Toward the end, there are a couple of shots where Nani is petting Stitch and it is obvious that she wasn’t really petting anything when they filmed her doing so because the CGI Stitch doesn’t fit in her hand at all like she isn’t even touching him.
I liked this a lot and won’t deny almost shedding a tear or two near the end. It’s a worthwhile film that carries the same themes as the original and has some humor too even if we didn’t get to see Stitch steal everyones’ left shoe.
3.5 out of 5 stars.
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Becky Tyler Art and Photography 
Lilo & Stitch is my favorite animated Disney movie. I love it for it’s absurdity and for the themes about family and finding the right people to fit in with. And for the Hawaiian locale. I went into the remake knowing it would likely never live up to what came before, and that made it easier for me to just sit back and enjoy this new take.
The story is the same. After Lilo’s parents have died, her older sister, Nani, struggles with being a sudden parent to a willful child when Stitch is marooned on their island when his spaceship crashes. Stitch uses Lilo as a human shield to protect himself from the aliens trying to catch him and Lilo finds herself a new friend. Her only friend. They strike up a kinship when they both need it the most only to have the real world crash down around them when a social worker decided to remove Lilo from her sister’s care.
What this movie gets right is the dynamic between Lilo and Nani. The two both have a lot of growing up to do and they are all the other has. This new version also adds to who Nani is. She is a wonderful surfer and was accepted into college before her parents’ deaths. She has given all that up to be a parent for Lilo, and it makes her struggle as she fails even more heartbreaking.
This film also adds a loving neighbor who happens to be the parent of the boy how has a crush on Nani. This neighbor serves as occasional babysitter, moral support, and the maternal character Nani and Lilo lost when their mother died. She also gives a better real world solution to Nani’s issue of how to care for Lilo. At the end, she’s there for a good reason so that Nani can go to college like she originally planned.
Tia Carrere comes back as the social worker. In the animated version, she voiced Nani’s character. Here, she is a woman who gives Nani a way forward to keep her sister in her care even as Nani struggles with doing so. Cobra Bubbles is still a character in the new version, but just as a CIA agent. He does not double as social worker in the new film and I like that change. It always bothered me that he went from CIA agent to social worker in the animated version. Again, suspension of disbelief was more believable in the 2002 version.
They also did away with the edited out storyline from the original where Lilo took photographs of tourists because they were always taking photos of her. It was her way of getting back at them for seeing her as a tourist attraction instead of a human being. Most of that was gone by the time the film was released in 2002, but you can see vestiges of it with Lilo taking photos of the tourists on the beach. None of that made it into this new film and I’m more than okay with it. Given all that goes on in this, that was a lot to say for a six year old girl who was already going through so much. Instead, the photographs and albums of her parents and sister are what are important to Lilo which fits the themes of family the movie carries much better than her photographing tourists.
Stitch is still as crazy as ever, but some of the whimsy is lost in translation with the CGI as they try to make him as real as possible while also portraying him as a cartoon. That is where the animation succeeded more – in the suspension of disbelief. The absurdity of these aliens walking freely around a Hawaiian island without causing a mass panic is what made the first film so funny. In the new version, not so much. Toward the end, there are a couple of shots where Nani is petting Stitch and it is obvious that she wasn’t really petting anything when they filmed her doing so because the CGI Stitch doesn’t fit in her hand at all like she isn’t even touching him.
I liked this a lot and won’t deny almost shedding a tear or two near the end. It’s a worthwhile film that carries the same themes as the original and has some humor too even if we didn’t get to see Stitch steal everyones’ left shoe.
3.5 out of 5 stars.
Discover more from Becky Tyler Art and Photography
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
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