“LILO AND STITCH (2025)”
Lilo and Stitch is the latest Disney film, this time directed by Dean Fleischer Camp- I’ve never seen his other films, so I can’t give an opinion on him as a director. Lilo and Stitch is an interesting choice because, unlike their other live-action remakes, this one isn’t based on a film that was incredibly successful at the box office. It did receive better success once out of cinemas, and most of it came from merchandise, which makes sense, since Stitch is a very merchandisable character.
If you know the plot of the original movie, I can save you a synopsis for this one. Stitch crashes from space into Hawaii, is adopted by Lilo (Maia Kealoha) from an animal shelter, she is being taken care of by her older sister Nani (played by Sydney Agudong) when two aliens come to the planet to capture Stitch and take him back into space.
The main thing that came out of this was that Chris Sanders would be reprising his role as Stitch, and he’s not the only returning cast member. The new social case worker is played by Tia Carrera who voiced Nani in the original- and yes, if you’re wondering, Cobra Bubbles is still in the movie, but he’s now just a CIA agent that sneaks his way into social services to find Stitch, which is a change I wasn’t happy with. If we’re bringing back this many cast members, why not bring back Ving Rhames to play him? He certainly looks the part!
I’m not sure if I would consider Lilo and Stitch as one of my all-time favourite Disney movies, but it’s up there. I will say that the casting is fine. I think that Maia Kealoha does a pretty good job as Lilo, and that Billy Magnussen does a good job as Pleakley. As for Sydney Agudong, I think that she would be good for Nani if the character weren’t written appallingly. Her character was done so dirty! They didn’t bring any of her good qualities from the original into this remake, and they even gave her some moments where she was written to be an absolute insult. This is nothing on the actress; she is playing the part she was given and must rely a lot on the writing and direction, which have failed her.
The film is kind of missing a villain- Gantu has been removed from this version, and so the film must make Jumba the villain, which doesn’t work because it means he must now lose all his character development. He’s not curious about Stitch’s defiance and his progress, and so must make a massive heel turn during the movie. It doesn’t help that Zack Galafinakis is not well cast in this role. He and Pleakley spend most of their time in this film in their human design- I’m guessing this is because neither actor wanted to spend a lot of time doing motion capture, or it was simply a budgetary thing.
The humour is lost, and the film is very overly padded. Loads of scenes went nowhere. This film is an hour and 48 minutes long, which makes it 20 minutes longer than the original movie. I am aware that the original had a lot of cuts at the last minute due to outside factors, the most notable being a scene that had to be reanimated due to insensitivities to 9/11 during a spaceship scene- even though there were cuts, it’s a very well-paced and well put together move, so I don’t understand why they felt the need to put loads and loads of additions into this movie. David is now Nani and Lilo’s neighbour, who lives with his grandma, which is an unnecessary addition and takes away from some parts of Lilo and Nani.
The effects on Stitch don’t work all the time, especially during the daytime scenes. It becomes apparent that it is CGI and highlights how stupid it is that people think that Stitch is a dog. You can kind of get away with that in a full animation, but in live action, it makes everyone look stupid.
The major concern I have with this movie is that the heart of the story is gone. This feels like a soulless product. The major themes of the movie have been diluted or are entirely missing, I was particularly interested in the fact that one of the clips that went around on Twitter was the clip from Lindsay Ellis’ essay that pointed out the themes of colonialism in the original, which are now missing in this one. As a result, I just felt no attachment to anything in this movie, which is something that I respected about the original.
The final nail in the coffin was the incredibly insulting new ending, which I hated.
Lilo and Stitch was supposed to be the last one of these live-action remakes since Snow White didn’t do well at the box office, but I fear that this one will be successful enough that they will try again, but I didn’t like this one either. You know how everyone sees those YouTube channels that are just content mills that are pushed out by AI to make a quick buck? That’s what these live-action remakes are feeling like: factory-produced nostalgia bait that constantly needs to justify its existence and completely miss the point about why people liked the original movie…
It is a soulless mess at the end of the day. None of the jokes are that funny, and while the acting is alright, the writing lets it down because most of the characters are watered-down versions of their original counterparts. I really can’t recommend this one in any way, shape, or form.
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