Lilo & Stitch
Disney was in a bit of a rough patch after their renaissance, with releases that (while liked by audiences) weren’t on the same level as their previous releases. While Pixar and DreamWorks had upped their game, Disney had seemingly slumped during the mid to late 1990s and wouldn’t recover until 2009 with The Princess and the Frog, but one of the few to escape this downtrodden run was the 2002 sci family comedy, Lilo & Stitch, which on the surface appeared to be just another product-of-the-time kids film jumping on the incredibly popular space/alien trend. However, this movie is anything but standard, actually turning out to be one of the best movies Disney has ever released.
In the far reaches of space, The United Galactic Federation has imprisoned mad scientist, Jumba Jookiba (voiced by David Ogden Stiers) for illegally creating dangerous experiments, with his latest, Experiment 626, being a chaotic little monster set to be exiled. While being transported by Captain Gantu (voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson), he manages to escape and crash lands on Earth on the island of Hawaii, where he is forced to evade capture from Jumba (who was released to apprehend his creation) and Agent Pleakly (voiced by Kevin McDonald) who is there to make sure Jumba doesn’t go off the rails. Backed into a corner with no way to escape the island, the experiment finds a shield in the form of Lilo (voiced by the late Daveigh Chase), an outcasted little girl who planned to adopt a puppy, finds the experiment (who she later names Stitch) and decides to take him instead. While her older sister and guardian Nani (voiced by Tia Carrere) is put off by Stitch’s odd look and violent behaviour, her priorities are instead focused on Cobra Bubbles (voiced by Ving Rhames), a social worker who informs Nani that Lilo may be taken out of her custody if she cannot prove she can properly look after her. Now acting as their ‘dog’, Stitch slowly starts to get close with Lilo, learns how her family has been broken after the death of their parents, and even though he was made to destroy, he might have the potential to be good. But with the aliens waiting to capture him which could put Lilo in danger, what will Stitch decide to do?
Lilo & Stitch proved to be a pleasant success for Disney, becoming a box office success, performing well with audiences and critics, and spawned a franchise that surprisingly never truly dipped into bad territories despite the contrary often happening for other Disney properties. With appealing visuals, very strong execution on a done-before premise, and wonderfully portrayed characters that pile in so much charm, humor and heart, it somehow worms its way into being one of the best that Disney has to offer.
Considering this was in a period where Disney hadn’t produced a fairy tale-type property for a few years, there was a push to create something that felt in line with what they did with the past, with then executive vice president of Disney Feature Animation, Thomas Schumacher, wanting to produce a film that was as he put it ‘’the Dumbo of this generation’’. The person chosen to lead this project was Chris Sanders, who had previously worked in the visual department and story boarding for films like The Rescuers Down Under, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King, and was even promoted to head of story on Mulan, with this being his first time directing. He decided to use a character that he originally created for an unsuccessfully pitched children’s book, a little monster named Stitch who interacted with animals in a forest, and restructured it through multiple rewrites with the help of his co-writer and co-director, Dean DeBlois, to result in the sci-fi family film everyone would eventually grow to love. While you can definitely feel how this story was shuffled through several different outlines as the plot is very simplified, based more on heartfelt experiences rather than an incredibly complicated single point, and has a premise that had been used several times before, its execution is as close to perfect as it’s going to get.
Even if it doesn’t offer any dramatic changes to the formula, the story is kept wonderfully vibrant thanks to the very believable characters, tight scripting, and bucket loads of charm through its central focus on the two sisters. While the alien portion of this story is well executed and leads to some solid laughs and visually appealing sequences, Lilo and Nani trying to navigate their lives after losing their parents is easily the best part of this movie and may even be one of the best handled components of any Disney film, as it effortlessly manages to tug at the heartstrings by being genuine and honest about their predicament and what could happen if things don’t work out (which hadn’t ever been shown before in a Western animated property). It doesn’t feel tied to any lame cliches, the way it talks about family and togetherness is very poignant without needing to say a lot, and even with Stitch and the other aliens shaking things up, it doesn’t lose its sentimental centre, and it really helps this film in the long run. If there were any major problems, it’s that the climax is a little basic and doesn’t look that interesting from a visual perspective, but considering it was a last-minute change after the original climax had Stitch hijacking a plane and flying it through the city of Honolulu (which had to be changed considering 9/11 had just occurred), it feels like they made the only choice they could.
Stitch quickly became one of Disney most popular and most marketable creations, and it’s not hard to see why. Disney clearly knew that had gold on their hands as the entire marketing strategy for the film had Stitch interrupting classic Disney scenes from The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King and Aladdin to push forward his chaotic and more overtly humorous tone (it didn’t really fit how the film would eventually look, but it did a good job putting him in everybody’s minds). Everything about how he’s positioned and designed screams appealing to a large demographic, but what’s nice is that his popularity does feel founded as he proves to be an incredibly endearing and memorable character. His design is simple enough to be instantly iconic, his animalistic tendencies give him that adorable vibe that people can throw on any fluffy creation, yet his very expressive animation and eventual spouts of communication helps him define a clear identity, and while Chris Sander’s voice could be annoying if poorly handled, the limited amount of dialogue and clean delivery of every line makes it work quite nicely, he’s a very well tooled character, which can also be said for a majority of the cast.
Lilo will forever stand as one of Disney’s best kid characters, which is nice considering they are often known for creating young characters that are pretty bland and vanilla. Lilo, in comparison, is not a normal kid; she’s strange, she has odd hobbies, she doesn’t really connect with other kids, and her writing and attitude feel like an actual outcasted kid. Everything about her feels genuine, her lines never feel pandering or overly cutesy, and the late Daveigh Chase does fantastic as the voice, she’s truly one of the Disney’s greatest kid characters. While the supporting characters aren’t as strong as Lilo or Stitch, most are still pretty likeable. Nani is portrayed very well by Tia Carrere and her relationship with Lilo is very well done (any time these two share a scene together, the movie is operating on all cylinders), Jumba and Pleakly could come across as one-note tropes and Pleakly is just a few steps away from being annoying, but the deliveries of both David Ogden Stiers and Kevin McDonald are so comedically strong that it makes even basic writing humorous, Bubbles is positioned like the villain, but the film is smart enough to not present him as so one note, and a lot of the background characters (human or alien) are well designed and have a lot of character to them, so it keeps the whole world feeling alive. The only two characters that don’t entirely work are Nani’s sometime boyfriend, David (voiced by Jason Scott Leigh) and Gantu, as even though both are voiced pretty well and work for the story, they’re delivered in a very basic fashion and don’t have much character to work with.
Ironically, the reason this movie adopts a different visual style from other Disney movies is for a budgetary reason, as with a budget of $80 million, it was seen as risky to use computer-generated imagery in the picture, leading Sanders to use his own two-dimension style and character designs and provide watercolour-painted backgrounds as opposed to the more traditional gouache technique used in classical Disney flicks. It feels like this was a smart call as the cooler colors and less prominent linework really helps make this environment look beachy, chill and incredibly lush, which appropriately matches the tone of Hawaii in general. The movie actually does contain a fair amount of Hawaiian culture from the look of the landscape, to the tropical flora and fauna, to the dialect most people adopt, to the various culturally themed iconography and even music, with a lot of the songs being either sampled from the work of Elvis Presley (who was insanely popular in Hawaii) or made for the film and sung by contemporary Hawaiian chanter, Mark Kealiʻi Hoʻomalu, and the Kamehameha Schools Children’s Chorus. During a period that sadly features a lot of dated music (even within most Disney films), it’s nice that this one remains perfectly timeless on all fronts and these songs still remain iconic to this day.
Lilo & Stitch is an oddball feature that nobody would’ve anticipated would be one of Disney’s most beloved, long-lasting and favoured features, and yet through the power of two talented directors who have a habit of taking done-before premises and using them to their absolute best, it’s no surprise that we we’re given something so precious. While a more modern feature that doesn’t feel like a retro fairy tale, it has the workings of a story book and with it the familiar simple charm, subtle wit and heartfelt sentimentality you’d expect from one, and this movie has that in spades. With great characters, inviting imagery, and a solid script that makes use of every second, this experiment proved to be a massive success.