By: Jessica A. Dennehy
As of late, Disney has been pumping out live versions of their original animated movies, with varying degrees of success. From The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast to Pinocchio and The Lady and the Tramp, Disney’s success with their remakes has been… inconsistent, to say the least. Alas, their latest “live-action” remake was of Lilo and Stitch, a movie produced in 2002 that focused on the titular duo of Lilo, a lonely young girl eager to make a friend, and Stitch, an experimental weapon of mass destruction hiding as a dog to flee the United Galactic Federation. Lilo tries to teach Stitch how to be good; Stitch attempts to destroy the island, all while aliens and federal agents alike try to hunt him down. Now, if you have never watched the original, I would highly recommend doing so, especially because this review would make no sense otherwise.
Changes in Character Dynamics
In the original film, the main character, irrefutably, was Lilo. The plot surrounded her and her future: whether or not she would spend it with her sister or at a foster home. When Stitch was introduced in the film, the plot delved into exploring the friendship between the two. Her sister Nani and her flowering relationship with David, although developed over its course, always played second fiddle… which made sense, since the duo were the titular characters of the movie.
In the remake, however, something that struck me was that there are so many scenes that didn’t have Lilo in them. In this film, they shifted the main character’s status from resting on Lilo entirely to a near fifty-fifty split between her and her sister. Instead of Nani just being Lilo’s caretaker, she now has passions and a future. She’s revealed to have been a near-prodigy: smart, an award-winning surfer, and a recipient of a full-ride attendance to UC San Diego, the highest-rated school for marine biology. In the remake, Nani seemingly gives this all up for Lilo, whereas in the animated version, Nani never had aspirations beyond surfing and keeping custody of Lilo. I appreciated this shift in plot dynamics for my next point.
Lilo is… Kind of a Brat
I fully acknowledge that Lilo, in both films, is only six years old. With this peculiar age, there’s an accepted immaturity and ignorance, which can be projected as cuteness and annoyance simultaneously. This could be childhood nostalgia clouding my memory of the original film, but Lilo treaded a thin line between childhood ignorance and charm. In the remake, wow, she was incredibly annoying.
I attribute it to two things: the removal of critical development scenes and the conversion from animated to live action. Lilo is already introduced as a moody but ultimately friendly girl, having difficulties reaching out to others her age. In the original film, however, she slowly gets out of her shell with Stitch; she learns to be more tolerant, accepting, and a better friend. This is explored through her and Stitch’s friendship and a multitude of cute scenes, like surfing and reading stories out loud, that show their growth. The remake lost most of these scenes and, correspondingly, never showed the extent of Lilo’s growth out of that moody shell introduced at the beginning of the film. She was a loose cannon; the film takes place, and she is still a loose cannon.
The conversion to a live-action movie, I fear, only made it worse. The actress who plays Lilo in the live action, Maia Kealoha, did a wonderful job in terms of performance, especially at only seven years old. My main problem with Lilo was that, in order to convey the childish nature of the role, Kealoha went high—every time Lilo got excited, she got squeaky and screamed. And if you ever watched the original film, Lilo is almost always excited. As someone who watched the remake in theaters, a solid consecutive thirty minutes of squeals and screams, full blast, can be a bit tiresome. And when I say tiresome, Kealoha’s Lilo conveyed the same energy as a kid in full meltdown over a toy at the checkout aisle. Since a lot of the film’s energy was lost in the conversion to live action, Kealoha’s endeavor to restore some of it was rooted in good intention; for me, however, it just, ironically, fell flat.
Is Jumba Completely Evil Now?
Something bewildering to me is that Disney chose to take a film with arguably no true antagonist and then make one from scratch. In true Disney fashion, the animated film had everyone won over by the power of ohana and friendship. Stitch is allowed to stay on Earth due to his newfound family; Jumba and Pleakley choose to join it. Happy ending, hooray. It was cheesy but reflective of the film’s emphasis on family and how no one gets left behind or forgotten.
The remake chose to take Jumba and make him go rogue—a true mad scientist. He abandons the family-man role and just pillages the island in his pursuit of Stitch, what he perceives to be the weapon to his ascent to power. I was surprised at this change, simply because the trend for these remakes has been to make everyone morally gray. Yet in the film where there is no true villain, instead of keeping that theme, Disney converted Jumba into a lackluster one. Strange.
Changed and Underdeveloped Relationships
It’s weird; despite the new film being over twenty minutes longer than the animated, a lot was lost in terms of character development and worldbuilding. I’ll break it down between the two relationships that lost the most: Pleakley and Jumba, and then Nani and David.
Pleakley and Jumba, in both films, start their relationship as the awkward, obsessed geek and the sullen experimenter who bargained this only for his freedom. In the original film, this morphs into genuine camaraderie, mostly thanks to their shared misery as they hunted down Stitch and their tendency to go into drag—I mean, disguises. At the end, they grew close enough as friends that they chose to stay on Earth together, joining the Pelekai family as “eccentric uncles,” if you will.
In the remake, the duo start off the same; they are only there because of a shared task. After cloning themselves into two white guys, they start going behind each other’s backs, shifting away from camaraderie and into an unspoken rivalry. Jumba ultimately dumps Pleakley in a supply closet in order to independently go after Stitch, which nicely sets him up to be the main antagonist of the film—but I truly did mourn what could have been of their banter and friendship.
Let’s talk about Nani and David. Nani was set up in the remake to be the strong, independent feminist, which is fine in and of itself. What I did find a problem in, however, was the lack of development for David as well as in their relationship. In the original film, David, yes, had an obvious crush on Nani, but he was confident enough of a guy where it made sense. He did her favors; he was seen helping her around the house and looking after Lilo, etc. In the original, quite frankly, he seemed like a great guy and burgeoning boyfriend material. The two had obvious chemistry, and his role in the film made sense.
In the remake, David maintains the crush but loses his confidence. He blubbers in front of Nani, who seems to barely put up with him; he wanders around with the Pelekai family yet never seems to interact with Nani while they’re together. There is no chemistry to speak of—half due to Nani being entirely focused on college and keeping Lilo in her custody, and half due to David not giving any meaningful or useful cues. He showed up on screen for maybe ten minutes max and consistently seemed out of place in the film.
About That Ending
The ending of the remake was dramatically different from the original. After the grand family reunion that happens in both films and leaves Stitch on Earth, two different paths are presented. The original shows a montage of a family: Jumba, Pleakley, David, Nani, Lilo, and Stitch, as they soak in their success. It’s your traditional Disney ending.
Now the ending of the remake? Nani leaves Lilo and Stitch in the care of David’s mother as she heads off to the University of California, San Diego, to complete her marine biology degree on a free ride. She visits, of course, thanks to the convenience of a portal gun she keeps in her dorm room (I’m just going to ignore the implications on that one), but the difference in endings is jarring. The majority of the film consists of Nani’s efforts to keep custody of Lilo, to the extent that she turned down her full ride the first time. But with the addition of an alien and the realization that her neighbors care for her, she dumps her sister off and heads to California.
I appreciate it from the feminist lens—how a woman is more than a housekeeper or mother figure—yet with a film so devoted to “Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten,” I expected more consistency thematically.
CGI & Visuals
The CGI in this film, in comparison to other Disney live-action remakes, falls in the middle. With so many characters being completely CGI, some of the scenes can be a bit jarring, but overall, Disney has certainly made it worse. Stitch was done fairly well, adhering to the original design quite closely. The Grand Councilwoman of the United Galactic Federation also looked solid. Pleakley and Jumba?—those were something to look at. Pleakley resembled an overtly textured frog, while Jumba was quite accurately described in the film as an “hairy potato”—with four eyes. So overall, the animation was decent for Disney standards, but nothing exceptional.
All in all, the Lilo and Stitch remake isn’t awful—but it’s definitely not the original. It has its moments, and some of the updates work, but a lot of the emotional core and charm got lost in translation. That said, don’t just take my word for it—watch it yourself and see what you think. Maybe you’ll love it. Maybe you won’t. Either way, it’s worth finding out.