Review of Lilo & Stitch (2002) by Anssi V — 13 Jan 2014

For me the last truly good Disney film was Tarzan right at the end of Disney Renaissance, and even that film had something of a lackluster villain. Since then Disney seemed to have lost its touch with poor story lines, revolting characters and lack of effort. Sure there were okay films here and there, but as a whole none of the films were anything I would remember or want to come back to.

And then this film came out. But even this one is something of a mixed blessing, because in many ways Lilo & Stitch is not a proper Disney film as we of the 90s have come to understand them. The drawing style is very different, there aren't all that many musical numbers and the whole setting doesn't feel very fairy tale-ish. And yet there's that Disney magic in some scenes that sends you right back to 90s and beyond. The way a character sings the final notes of a song, the cute way someone just looks at something, the silent moments, the sudden depth of character created through a single line of dialogue.

And it's just a damn good movie. Stitch (voiced by the director Chris Sanders) especially is a very good character, starting out as somewhat goofy creature of mass destruction - no, it's not an oxymoron - and then evolving throughout the course of the film as he begins to understand the meaning of family and bonds. His last few lines of dialogue are just... onions, man, I blame onions.

Nani (Tia Carrere) is also a great character. It might very well be the first time in a Disney film where we have a parental figure that's... human. She means well, but you can see so clearly how hard she struggles trying to raise her little sister while still in the process of growing up herself. Wonderful character, as is Cobra Bubbles (Ving Rhames), a social worker send over to check on Lilo. It would have been so much easier to make him just the bad guy, but the luckily the movie rises above that and you can see his point of view as he too struggles with his job, but for different reasons.

I must admit that aside from Stitch the rest of the aliens didn't impress me too much. They were creatively drawn and every now and then some of them made me laugh, but I was much more interested in Stitch and the humans so at times it felt like the other aliens were stealing screen time from much more deserving characters. Not too often luckily, but at some points.

On the technical side of things, it's not the best looking Disney there is because of lower budget, but it's still very good as far as animation movies go. And as stated, there aren't too many musical numbers, but the ones we get aren't too shabby, so no real complaints. The opening song, especially, is a very cute little Hawaiian number.

Is this as good as the Renaissance films? Not quite, though it's not too far away. It's still a lovable little film about family and friendship and definitely a step in the right direction from a company that had been left stumbling around in the new century. See it if you love Disney and haven't seen it already.