Lilo & Stitch (United States, 2025)

The best animated films are the ones that work on multiple levels, allowing children and adults to engage, often in different ways, with the characters and story. Throughout its history, Walt Disney Pictures has excelled in making those kinds of films. Lilo & Stitch isn’t one of them. The film is pitched toward younger viewers, choosing to optimize the enjoyment of 4-9-year olds over the appreciation of their parents. While the result is far from the pinnacle of Disney’s family-friendly production hill, it’s at least as good as most of the other animated-to-live-action transformations.

Anyone with a young child will likely appreciate the film more than those who don’t. Adults with a nostalgic connection to the original animated film, released in 2002 at tail end of Disney’s 1990s animated renaissance, are apt to react positively to this re-telling of the story. Those who don’t fall into either category (or both) will probably perceive this as a juvenile, heavy-handed pastiche of bad science fiction tropes, cheesy slapstick, and undercooked drama. Overall, this Lilo & Stitch isn’t shy about who it’s trying to reach and that audience doesn’t include anyone in search of well-crafted cinema. This was originally appropriately planned as a direct-to-Disney+ feature; it was switched to a theatrical release when studio executives saw the final cut and their eyeballs turned into dollar signs.

I was not a fan of the original Lilo & Stitch but that’s perhaps because I made the mistake of trying to compare it to the litany of modern classics that had preceded it. It never was one of them nor did it try to be. It was a big-screen cartoon, which is how most movie-goers at the time saw it. Lilo & Stitch was a box office success and spawned several direct-to-DVD sequels and several TV series. It’s just old enough that some of the kids who were fans now have children of their own. That aspect of sharing a beloved childhood favorite is the whole reason why this generation of soulless live-action remakes continues to plague the box office.

To be fair, Lilo & Stitch contains some adult-friendly material. A few of the gags are funny and the manipulative bonding material between Lilo and her older sister works on a basic emotional level. The young actress who plays Lilo, Maia Kealoha, is absolutely adorable – she’s the embodiment of rambunctiousness that characterizes the average high-energy 6-year-old. I enjoyed the Elvis songs although they are neither as omnipresent nor as important as in the original.

The narrative framework tracks that of the 2002 film. Changes are mostly minor. One character has been split into two and others have been combined. The two alien antagonists have been given human “disguises” to allow for actor portrayals (and presumably to save on special effects money). But the main story remains the same: how the orphaned Lilo craves a friend and finds one when she discovers the blue alien Stitch (Chris Sanders) hiding out in an animal shelter. The creature, which Lilo mistakes for a strange dog, is really Experiment 626, an intergalactic terror known for spreading chaos everywhere it goes. Lilo, Stitch, and Lilo’s older, beleaguered sister, Nani (Sydney Elizabeth Agudong), struggle to form a family as forces collaborate to rip them apart. Those include a stern-but-well-intentioned social worker (Tia Carrera) who believes Lilo would be better in a foster home; two aliens, Dr. Jumba Jookiba (Zach Galifianakis) and Agent Wendell Pleakley (Billy Magnussen), who have been sent to recapture Stitch; and CIA agent Cobra Bubbles (Courtney B. Vance), who is investigating extraterrestrial activity on Earth.

With these live-action remakes, one doesn’t have to be concerned about animation quality, but there’s a lot of CGI stuff in Lilo & Stitch and it often has a cheap-ish look. One suspects that if Disney had envisioned this as a big-screen endeavor from the beginning, they might have accorded the production a bigger budget but director Dean Fleischer Camp (best known for the Marcel the Shell with His Shoes On movies) does the best he can with what he has and makes good use of the picturesque beauty of Hawaii, where the film is set.

In the casting department, the production has struck gold in choosing the two primary humans. Maia Kealoha, making her feature debut, more than compensates for her lack of experience with an infectious energy. Sydney Elizabeth Agudong has more experience than Kealoha but leaves an equally strong impression. The sisterly chemistry between the two is one of the film’s strengths. Original Stitch voice actor (and creator) Chris Sanders returns as the blue alien, despite having experienced logistical issues doing the role (he was finalizing The Wild Robot, which he directed, at the time). The rest of the actors, including Zach Galifianakis, Billy Magnussen, and Courtney B. Vance, are largely forgettable. Tia Carrera, who voiced Nani in the 2002 film, has a small role.

Lilo & Stitch feels less like an obvious cash-grab than Snow White, although that’s perhaps because the original isn’t as esteemed. The animated Lilo & Stitch is sufficiently mediocre that the decision to “upgrade” it to live action hasn’t provoked much in the way of outrage. There’s nothing about the production to disabuse notions that it is an effective bonding opportunity for parents and young children (especially girls) with a healthy side order of nostalgia, Disney’s overused spice of choice for its live-action dishes.

Lilo & Stitch (United States, 2025)