The new Lilo and Stitch (now streaming on VOD platforms like Amazon Prime Video before it lands on Disney+) and How to Train Your Dragon live-action remakes have us at odds. They’re unnecessary reiterations of perfectly terrific, possibly even classic, films, produced and released as little more than blatantly transparent IP flexing (and all the capitalist marketing stuff implied therein). The conundrum is, they’re both reasonably well-made and true to the hearts of their original stories – and huge box office hits. This latter point is the big one because it gets lots of people in theaters, supporting the outside-the-home cinema experience that seems critically endangered. And so this Lilo redoes a deeply charming 2002 Disney 2D-animated hit keenly punctuated by Elvis songs, making a few changes along the story’s periphery while still ably hitting the same beats that made us laugh a lot and cry a little – and it’s good enough to make a reviewer wish it was a malformed mess like the recent Snow White redo, and therefore easier to denounce the cynical accounting decisions that made it a reality.
The Gist: The scene: A far-off galaxy, its name all but unpronounceable. An assembly of aliens is, uh, assembled in front of a fuzzmonster that looks like a koala bear guzzled an experimental serum from a mad scientist’s lab, turning it blue and giving it four arms, big bugged-out eyes and a Muppet mouth full of very bitey teeth. This is Project 626 (voice of Chris Sanders, reprising the role from the 2002 film, which he co-directed), the product of unethical scientific whatnot by Jumba (voice of Zach Galifianakis). The Grand Councilwoman (voice of Hannah Waddingham) sentences Jumba to prison and Project 626 to exile – and then the li’l beastie steals a spaceship and rockets off to freedom, destined to crash on Earth, with Jumba and “Earth expert” Pleakley (Billy Magnussen) ordered to retrieve him.
Note, the first 10 minutes of this “live action” remake consist wholly of computer animation. So we hard pivot to Actual Real Life Hawaii, specifically the island of Kaua’i. Lilo Pelekai (Maia Kealoha) is six years old and heavily put-upon: orphaned, bullied, mostly unsupervised. She has spirit to spare, though, and it manifests via some very adorable mischief ranging from stealing a dip in the hot tub of the nearby vacation resort, to shoving one of her bullies off the stage smack in the middle of a hula-dance performance. She’s under the guardianship of her just-barely-adult-age sister Nani (Sydney Elizabeth Agudong), who’s struggling mightily to make ends meet – she waits tables, drives a truck that never seems to want to start and watches the bills pile up. The social worker (Tia Carrere, who voiced Nani in the original movie) drops by and is mostly understanding, but gives Nani a deadline to clean the place up and fill the fridge and get the checkbook back in the black or else, well, they’ll have to discuss other arrangements that nobody wants.
Meanwhile, Project 626 crashes, is scooped up by animal control and adopted by Lilo under the supervision of her neighbor, Tutu (Amy Hill), the grandmother of Nani’s love interest Kevin (Kaipo Dudoit). Mind you, the beast somehow sucked his antennae and extra set of arms back into his body so he could pass as the world’s least convincing dog – and it worked. Lilo names him Stitch, and the li’l beast proves to be even more mischievous than his “owner.” And destructive. Jumba designed him to be a destroyer of all things, after all, so the curtains and dishes and knickknacks and furniture really don’t stand a chance. He makes a bad situation even worse for the exasperated Nani. Elsewhere, Jumba and Pleakley land and disguise themselves as humans who conveniently look like Zach Galifianakis and Billy Magnussen, respectively, and set off to find and capture the Creature Currently Known As Stitch. Which means Nani now has social workers and weird aliens on her tail. Oh, and the CIA too, represented by an intimidating agent, Cobra Bubbles (Courtney B. Vance). Things will only get worse before they get better, it seems, especially since Lilo has grown rather attached to this little wrecking ball of a creature, who’s more intelligent than you might expect and therefore doubly hard to ditch on a snipe hunt.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: This story is from the Probably Wouldn’t Exist Without E.T. file. Plenty of Gremlins energy here, too.
Performance Worth Watching: Kealoha is a true find, a little kid with big-screen presence who may single-handedly justify watching this Lilo instead of the original. Well, maybe once or twice. But not permanently.
Memorable Dialogue: A question of Stitch’s origin:
Kevin: You sure that’s a dog?
Stitch: Ruff.
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Dear Disney: We are increasingly weary of your profit-margin, debits-and-credits boardroom decisions passing as movies. Sometimes we can look past the calculations and appreciate your films for their heart, and entertainment value. But remaking a 23-year-old movie for no logical reason other than cashing in on merchandising and ticket sales has us at odds with the legitimate feelings we experience watching Lilo and Stitch 2025: The Not Quite Animated, Not Quite Live Action Version. You draw out our emotions and undermine them with capitalism, but this time, it’s shamelessly transparent. I can’t go on together, with a suspicious mind.
Oh, and such crass product placement for a specific brand of kids’ juice pouches is just beyond the pale. Unbecoming, to be blunt. I guess you really need that endorsement money to add to Scrooge McDuck’s bursting-at-the-seams money bin.
At least this Lilo offers more alterations from the original movie than the nearly shot-for-shot, line-by-line remake that was How to Train Your Dragon 2025: Is This What We Call Live Action These Days? It downplays the Elvis soundtrack a little bit, switches up some of the social worker and CIA stuff, adds the nice neighbor-lady character and makes a notable change with the ending that didn’t bother me as an appreciator of the original, but may find some diehard fans a tad honked off. (And I can’t recall – in the original, does Stitch scamper across the walls and ceilings like Annie did at the climax of Hereditary?) But none of it changes the experience in a significant manner.
I can say the transition from full-on animation to whatever this hybrid style is – we need a term for it besides “live action,” bad – results in a more hectic quality to Stitch’s most rambunctious moments. What is perfectly hyperbolic in a cartoon is more awkward and grating when live actors are involved. Especially slapstick, which is a natural state for Daffy Duck and Donald Duck and Tom and Jerry and Stitch, but is just, you know, slapstick when a human being not named Laurel, Hardy or Harold Lloyd does it. The movie feels chaotic for the first half – it moves so fast you can’t see the seams in the CG – until Stitch takes a chill pill and shows he kinda almost understands that breaking things may jeopardize his friendship with Lilo.
As ever, danger lies in the cute animated creature burgling the show from the humans and their relatable dilemmas, but Kealoha anchors the film with a performance that’s spunky-sweet, funny and tender, but plays a variety of emotional notes in between the happy/sad Disney extremes. The kid is terrific at acting aside a figment whose expressions and reactions won’t be added until post-production. And she can act without performing, and that fine delineation illustrates how filmmaker Dean Fleischer Camp – semi-smoothly shifting from the teensy-twee dramedy of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On to a Disney ultrabudget – may have a knack for directing children. If you must see this Lilo and Stitch, watch it for her, because she brings life to a project that could have been lifeless. And for moments at a time, lengthy ones even, she may just help you forget how this remake is fundamentally unnecessary.
Our Call: This new Lilo is about 78 percent as good as the original, putting it in the Just Fine bucket. The less effort you put into seeing it, the better you may feel, so maybe wait until it’s on Disney+ before you STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.