Just… Stop
the braintrust at Disney strikes again, with yet another lazy, easy remake likely to please shareholders.
Lilo & Stitch
Director: Dean Fleischer Camp • Writers: Chris Kekaniokalani Bright, Mike Van Waes, based on the screenplay by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois
Starring: Maia Kealoha, Sydney Elizebeth Agudong, Chris Sanders, Billy Magnussen, Zach Galifianakis
USA • 1hr 48mins
Opens Hong Kong May 29 • I
Grade: C
Pray tell, Disney, how does one make Hawaii look shitty? Please, I’ll wait…
I ask this question because hours and hours later I’m still trying to figure out how Oscar nominated (!) Marcel the Shell with Shoes On director Dean Fleischer Camp and his alleged cinematographer Nigel Bluck (The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent) made Hawaii look shitty. The latest in Disney’s dispiriting corporate gravy train powered on the dying soul of its own library (The Little Mermaid, Snow White) is Lilo & Stitch, and it is baffling in so, so many ways. The 2002 version of L&S was an under-the-radar favourite thanks to its vivid hand drawn 2D animation and gorgeous watercolour backgrounds (that captured Hawaii better than anything here), predictable but sincere messages that families demonstrate infinite diversity in infinite combinations and that we all feel a little alien sometimes, and which gave us a pair of complex and recognisably human girls/women in 85 minutes. Camp’s 2025 L&S is a sloppy and calculated mess that’s a legitimate eyesore because of dull-as-dishwater compositions and unimaginative filmmaking – a far, far cry from Marcel – with story threads that don’t need to be there and a shrill, charm-free lead performance by a first-time actor that’s not ready for prime time. Sorry. I know. We’re not supposed to dunk on kids, and yes, Camp guided Maia Kealoha to either shrieking or flat line recitations, so she’s not entirely to blame; it’s not a judgement on her moral character. She’s just not very good. To make matters worse she gets little support either from the storytelling or those gawdawful visuals. Lilo & Stitch looks like it was made on the cheap for Disney+ until someone in a boardroom heard the early reactions to the new CGI Stitch were positive. Why let all that merchandising potential go to waste?
She’s fine when she’s not ‘acting’
And yes, I’ve heard the argument about not comparing remakes to each other. “Oh, but the other one is old.” For starters, when you do a remake that’s a carbon copy, it’s fair game. With the exception of ditching the alien drag for Stitch’s pursuers from the United Galactic Federation, Earth specialist Wendell Pleakley (Billy Magnussen) and Stitch’s mad scientist creator Dr Jumba Jookiba (Zach Galifianakis, looking alarmingly bored), and splitting the nosy social worker Cobra Bubbles into two – CIA alien chaser Cobra Bubbles (Courtney B Vance) and kindly CPS case handler Mrs Kekoa (Tia Carrere) – the plot is identical. It’s inviting comparison. Oh, and they remade Mrs Hasagawa (comedy vet Amy Hill) as a supportive neighbour, Tutu (Hill). Just like last time, when Jookiba’s uncontrollable, snotty (literally), chaos actor Experiment 626 escapes his home planet, he winds up in Hawaii, where six-year-old lonely outsider Lilo Pelekai (Kealoha) adopts him as a “dog”. She of course renames Experiment 626 Stitch (voiced by the OG co-director/Stitch Chris Sanders) and the madness begins, putting all sorts of stress on Lilo’s sister Nani (Sydney Elizebeth Agudong, who Carrere voiced in ’02). She’s trying to hold down a job, find health insurance, pay overdue bills and be a de facto parent to Lilo in the wake of their parents’ deaths – and not lose her sister to foster care. An added wrinkle? She gave up a full scholarship to USCD to raise Lilo and clearly regrets it. Stitch’s lunacy costs Nani her job, her home, almost drowns him, nearly makes Lilo a ward of the state – but it also teaches everyone about the true meaning of “ohana” and heals a trio of slightly broken people. If it’s possible, there’s less Hawaiian-ness in this one, even with Hawaiian co-writer Chris Kekaniokalani Bright on board (though now that Disney is anti-DEI that’s probably okay), and the humanity the cartoon sisters had is almost completely absent.
Secondly, 23 years isn’t exactly Georges Méliès territory.
I suppose Lilo & Stitch ’25 isn’t utterly worthless. Agudong has a solid, grounded screen presence in a slighly expanded, if more inclined to abandonment role of Nani, even if she’s tasked with more mugging than is needed, and Magnussen retains some of the endearing weirdness that made the vaguely queer animated version such a treat. And in all fairness Stitch doesn’t look like nightmare fuel. He could have been another early Sonic the Hedgehog catastrophe but he mostly works and is mostly cute. Way cuter, it must be said, than those fucking Minions, whose toy sale numbers (rumoured to be in the US$13 billion range) Disney is surely eyeballing. Stitch at least has a character arc. And there are kids out there who want to see it. Months ago at another film a little girl next to me saw the trailer and let loose a hearty “Stitch-ah!!” If she enjoys herself then ga yauh.
It’s just that L&S is so cynical it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. It’s landing in late May for good reason, as in most parts of the world schools are getting out for summer and busy parents and older siblings are going to be looking for a way to keep the littler ones occupied, and a trip to the movies is still a treat. It opened on a holiday long weekend in North America and so ka-ching! (US$300 million global opening and sinking Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning like a sub). It’s the critic-proof path of least resistance to fat quarterly profits, even if that comes at the expense of what made the original unique and allowed it to gain so much traction over the past two decades; what made a stock standard story so easy to swallow. Sanders doubled down on that creativity after the first L&S, making How to Train Your Dragon and The Wild Robot with directing partner Dean DeBlois. Alert the media: DeBlois is cashing a cheque for directing the live action remake (goddammit!) of Dragon, coming in about two weeks. It’s never going to end. These live action remakes are getting tired, and even Disney knows it. If the next one isn’t The Rock’s Bambi, I’m out.