Lilo and Stitch (2002) Review by TreyVore
Lilo and Stitch (2002)
Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures
Director: Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois
Cast: Chris Sanders (Stitch), Daveigh Chase (Lilo), Tia Carrere (Nani), David Ogden Stiers (Jumba), Kevin MacDonald (Pleakley), Ving Rhames (Cobra Bubbles), Zoe Caldwell (Grand Councilwoman), Kevin Michael Richardson (Gantu)
Runtime: 85 min.
MPAA Rating: PG (mild sci-fi action)
This movie is about two different stories that converge to be one, the first being set in the Turo system in outer space, where the Galactic Federation has sentenced mad scientist Dr. Jumba Jookiba to prison for the illegal creation of Experiment 626, a nigh-indestructible alien terror that evades being marooned on an asteroid and escapes to the Hawaiian island of Kauai. The second story is about a lonely, Elvis Presley-junkie Hawaiian girl named Lilo who is recently an orphan and now in is the custody of her older sister Nani. Desperately wanting a friend, the two sisters head to a pet shelter where the alien is mistaken for a dog. After Lilo adopts the hyper destructive experiment, he is named Stitch and starts to add to the family’s chaos. So now with social worker Cobra Bubbles keeping a close watch on the two sisters and Stitch now having to dodge capture from Jumba and cycloptic Earth expert Agent Pleakley, can the two stories stay together as a unit proving the power of ohana?
This movie is #42 (formerly #41, but now #42 due to the inclusion of Dinosaur) in the Disney Animated Film Catalog. During the 2000s, Disney was in a serious rut. Their Renaissance period was seemingly over and other studios like Pixar, DreamWorks and Blue Sky were using all CGI animation which was really kicking all kinds of ass at the box-office; Disney’s original foundation on cel-animation was starting to look like old news. At this time, just about everything they gave us after we left the 1990s either disappointed or outright bombed at the box-office; movies like Fantasia 2000 and The Emperor’s New Groove did well but that was because of the foreign market, Dinosaur did well but was a disappointment considering its budget, Atlantis: the Lost Empire was a dud no matter how you look at it and Treasure Planet was a massive bomb costing $140 million but domestically only made about $39 million (OWW!!)
This movie, a brainchild of Chris Sanders, was the lone exception; it proved to be a major hit for Disney when they needed one and momentarily put the idea that cel-animation was on the way out to rest. I imagine that like Shrek was a year earlier, Lilo and Stitch became a success because it was going against the grind of what you were probably expecting from Disney. With a light tone and more mature attitude than normal, combined with an effective marketing campaign (the ‘Inter-Stitch-ials’, which consisted of ad spots where Stitch would be in Simba’s place during his coronation or drop a chandelier on Belle and the Beast), Disney would then slam us with Stitch in the coming years, where by September of 2003 we would have a pilot movie for a cartoon series that would air on ABC and Disney Channel, and two more movies in under 5 years.
Many people tend to see this as the last big cel-animated film, though that medium seems a lot less dead now than it did in 2004 (The Simpsons Movie would later outgross it). So with all that in mind, how well does the movie hold up? Well, I’d say it’s aged fine.
…I said fine, I didn’t say fantastic.
A reason for that is because I still like the respect for Hawaiian culture, the tributes they give to Elvis Presley, the crisp watercolor art style (courtesy of their former Florida animation unit, I took a watercolor class around the time of its release) and it’s sense of humor, it was very much a sight in 2002, but while it remains watchable it’s not holding up as well as I probably would have liked.
We have two stories that are supposed to be very different but only on the outset; an example of which is when Stitch is being carted away to his exile he bites Captain Gantu and then he asks the two ship pilots “Does this look infected to you?”. Then after we head to Hawaii and Mertle teases Lilo she attacks her. It’s then implied that Lilo bit Mertle as she then asks the other girls “Does this look infected to you?”. The heart is still there and maybe this is because times and tastes changed but it almost seems pre-plotted. Did I mention Stitch is too heavy to swim and Hawaii is considered to be waterlocked?
As a part of any story, the movie needs conflict, and here we have two sources in the forms of Cobra Bubbles, who wants Nani to prove she’s a competent legal guardian, and the Grand Councilwoman, who wants Jumba and Pleakley to find and recapture Stitch. Because the movie spends about 85% of its time in Hawaii, it feels very much like the movie’s true raison d’etre is Lilo and her strained relationship with Nani. Because of this, while the threat imposed by Cobra Bubbles feels very real, the threat imposed by the Grand Councilwoman is blatant but ultimately meaningless. This takes a lot of credibility away from the alien side of the story. Sure Jumba and Pleakley remain major characters and they are still funny, but other than giving some kind of connection to the alien story and making jokes they don’t maintain a strong role in the movie. If they were cut from the movie it could probably still work, but if you were to do that, wouldn’t that be like saying you could just cut Stitch from the movie and you don’t lose much? But I guess the aliens still have to be there because we don’t want this to seem like some made-for-TV movie you could see on We, Lifetime or the Hallmark Channel so in comes Captain Gantu to tie the two threads together.
If I had to say it reminds me of anything, it would be like when you got your NES back in the day and it came bundled with a dual Game Pak of Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt. Not saying anything about the quality while Super Mario Bros. felt like a game that you would fondly remember and still hold a place in gamers’ hearts, Duck Hunt was notable for being the game that required the light gun peripheral and for the dog that trolls you when you fail. While Super Mario Bros. still works no matter what, Duck Hunt by contrast played well on a CRT TV, but it doesn’t work quite as well on a flatscreen TV. Not to mention the NES controller still works but the light gun doesn’t due to age.
I honestly don’t like having to say all this because this was a movie that helped get me back into Disney. I was there for the Disney College Program in 2004 when Stitch had essentially full-on invaded Disney World. I was there for the grand opening of “Stitch’s Great Escape!”, a retooling of the ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter that became known as their worst attraction. I was in the middle of all the Stitch-Mania. I still hold fond memories of this movie but its best days are probably behind it.
It may sound like I’m being harsh, and while I would have originally given the movie a very high score, now it's still a reasonably high score. I still think this movie is good and at least it will make for a nice family movie in a time like this.
Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures
Director: Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois
Cast: Chris Sanders (Stitch), Daveigh Chase (Lilo), Tia Carrere (Nani), David Ogden Stiers (Jumba), Kevin MacDonald (Pleakley), Ving Rhames (Cobra Bubbles), Zoe Caldwell (Grand Councilwoman), Kevin Michael Richardson (Gantu)
Runtime: 85 min.
MPAA Rating: PG (mild sci-fi action)
This movie is about two different stories that converge to be one, the first being set in the Turo system in outer space, where the Galactic Federation has sentenced mad scientist Dr. Jumba Jookiba to prison for the illegal creation of Experiment 626, a nigh-indestructible alien terror that evades being marooned on an asteroid and escapes to the Hawaiian island of Kauai. The second story is about a lonely, Elvis Presley-junkie Hawaiian girl named Lilo who is recently an orphan and now in is the custody of her older sister Nani. Desperately wanting a friend, the two sisters head to a pet shelter where the alien is mistaken for a dog. After Lilo adopts the hyper destructive experiment, he is named Stitch and starts to add to the family’s chaos. So now with social worker Cobra Bubbles keeping a close watch on the two sisters and Stitch now having to dodge capture from Jumba and cycloptic Earth expert Agent Pleakley, can the two stories stay together as a unit proving the power of ohana?
This movie is #42 (formerly #41, but now #42 due to the inclusion of Dinosaur) in the Disney Animated Film Catalog. During the 2000s, Disney was in a serious rut. Their Renaissance period was seemingly over and other studios like Pixar, DreamWorks and Blue Sky were using all CGI animation which was really kicking all kinds of ass at the box-office; Disney’s original foundation on cel-animation was starting to look like old news. At this time, just about everything they gave us after we left the 1990s either disappointed or outright bombed at the box-office; movies like Fantasia 2000 and The Emperor’s New Groove did well but that was because of the foreign market, Dinosaur did well but was a disappointment considering its budget, Atlantis: the Lost Empire was a dud no matter how you look at it and Treasure Planet was a massive bomb costing $140 million but domestically only made about $39 million (OWW!!)
This movie, a brainchild of Chris Sanders, was the lone exception; it proved to be a major hit for Disney when they needed one and momentarily put the idea that cel-animation was on the way out to rest. I imagine that like Shrek was a year earlier, Lilo and Stitch became a success because it was going against the grind of what you were probably expecting from Disney. With a light tone and more mature attitude than normal, combined with an effective marketing campaign (the ‘Inter-Stitch-ials’, which consisted of ad spots where Stitch would be in Simba’s place during his coronation or drop a chandelier on Belle and the Beast), Disney would then slam us with Stitch in the coming years, where by September of 2003 we would have a pilot movie for a cartoon series that would air on ABC and Disney Channel, and two more movies in under 5 years.
Many people tend to see this as the last big cel-animated film, though that medium seems a lot less dead now than it did in 2004 (The Simpsons Movie would later outgross it). So with all that in mind, how well does the movie hold up? Well, I’d say it’s aged fine.
…I said fine, I didn’t say fantastic.
A reason for that is because I still like the respect for Hawaiian culture, the tributes they give to Elvis Presley, the crisp watercolor art style (courtesy of their former Florida animation unit, I took a watercolor class around the time of its release) and it’s sense of humor, it was very much a sight in 2002, but while it remains watchable it’s not holding up as well as I probably would have liked.
We have two stories that are supposed to be very different but only on the outset; an example of which is when Stitch is being carted away to his exile he bites Captain Gantu and then he asks the two ship pilots “Does this look infected to you?”. Then after we head to Hawaii and Mertle teases Lilo she attacks her. It’s then implied that Lilo bit Mertle as she then asks the other girls “Does this look infected to you?”. The heart is still there and maybe this is because times and tastes changed but it almost seems pre-plotted. Did I mention Stitch is too heavy to swim and Hawaii is considered to be waterlocked?
As a part of any story, the movie needs conflict, and here we have two sources in the forms of Cobra Bubbles, who wants Nani to prove she’s a competent legal guardian, and the Grand Councilwoman, who wants Jumba and Pleakley to find and recapture Stitch. Because the movie spends about 85% of its time in Hawaii, it feels very much like the movie’s true raison d’etre is Lilo and her strained relationship with Nani. Because of this, while the threat imposed by Cobra Bubbles feels very real, the threat imposed by the Grand Councilwoman is blatant but ultimately meaningless. This takes a lot of credibility away from the alien side of the story. Sure Jumba and Pleakley remain major characters and they are still funny, but other than giving some kind of connection to the alien story and making jokes they don’t maintain a strong role in the movie. If they were cut from the movie it could probably still work, but if you were to do that, wouldn’t that be like saying you could just cut Stitch from the movie and you don’t lose much? But I guess the aliens still have to be there because we don’t want this to seem like some made-for-TV movie you could see on We, Lifetime or the Hallmark Channel so in comes Captain Gantu to tie the two threads together.
If I had to say it reminds me of anything, it would be like when you got your NES back in the day and it came bundled with a dual Game Pak of Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt. Not saying anything about the quality while Super Mario Bros. felt like a game that you would fondly remember and still hold a place in gamers’ hearts, Duck Hunt was notable for being the game that required the light gun peripheral and for the dog that trolls you when you fail. While Super Mario Bros. still works no matter what, Duck Hunt by contrast played well on a CRT TV, but it doesn’t work quite as well on a flatscreen TV. Not to mention the NES controller still works but the light gun doesn’t due to age.
I honestly don’t like having to say all this because this was a movie that helped get me back into Disney. I was there for the Disney College Program in 2004 when Stitch had essentially full-on invaded Disney World. I was there for the grand opening of “Stitch’s Great Escape!”, a retooling of the ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter that became known as their worst attraction. I was in the middle of all the Stitch-Mania. I still hold fond memories of this movie but its best days are probably behind it.
It may sound like I’m being harsh, and while I would have originally given the movie a very high score, now it's still a reasonably high score. I still think this movie is good and at least it will make for a nice family movie in a time like this.
Lilo and Stitch (2002)
TreyVore rates it: B - Very Good!
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