Lilo & Stitch

I think by now Disney’s live-action remakes will forever be chasing the creative success of the company’s animated films in ways they’ll never be able to match. That said, this one wasn’t terrible.

A remake of 2002’s animated movie of the same name, Lilo & Stitch follows our titular protagonists after the latter crash-lands on Earth in an attempt to evade the United Galactic Federation — a cosmic entity that will stop at nothing to eliminate the illegal genetic experiment that is Stitch (Chris Sanders). Making an unbreakable connection with a young Hawaiian girl named Lilo (Maia Kealoha) and her overwhelmed older sister Nani (Sydney Elizebeth Agudong) after being mistaken for a wounded animal, it isn’t long before Stitch’s creator Dr. Jumba Jookiba (Zach Galifianakis) and the Earth “expert” Wendell Pleakley (Billy Magnusson) arrive looking to throw a wrench into Stitch’s escape plan. Needing to find a way to not only evade the pair but blend into Hawaiian culture, Stitch’s bond with Lilo begins to evolve from being unlikely friends to close family, putting the two on a collision course against cosmic forces that want nothing more than to rip them apart.

To be clear, I’m not the biggest fan of most of the live-action remakes Disney has been pumping out as of late, mostly because only a select few have elevated the original material in worthwhile ways. With that in mind, there’s not an egregious amount of things wrong with Lilo & Stitch. But with only a few highs, multiple lows, and (thankfully) a couple of moments that do the animated film justice, this new live-action experience is far from a slam dunk.

From the stellar special effects that depict the wild child that is Stitch and his destructive tendencies to some solid casting all around (especially the energetic and lovable Maia Kealoha), I’m less annoyed about the craft of the film and more annoyed with how this movie turned out as a whole, mostly because the sum of its parts left me wanting. And while there are a few instances where the adaptation is relatively spot-on (Lilo and Stitch’s always-entertaining and hilarious shenanigans help a lot), there’s too much less interesting stuff happening otherwise that takes away from it in ways that puzzled me.

Whether it’s the more cynical versions of Jumba and Wendell, the cutting and adjustment of certain animated characters and moments from the original (for no apparent reason), and a finale that lands with a bit of a thud as it tries to reimagine the meaning of “Ohana” and how it relates to Lilo and Nani’s futures in this film, and there’s enough in Lilo & Stitch for audiences to get frustrated by as much as there are things to enjoy. Not to sound like a cranky old Disney fan, but in my mind, even if you decide to update the classics for modern audiences, the through line and messages of these movies need to be retained, or at the very least fleshed out in ways that add to the original story rather than distract from it. And although I doubt anyone will come away hating this movie, I wouldn’t be surprised if most wanted more from it, just as I did.

It’s not that I don’t like this version of Lilo & Stitch — far from it — it’s just that, like most of these Disney remakes, it’s yet another case of redoing a classic movie in a way that doesn’t add much to the original while changing enough things that the final film becomes a bit of a letdown in its attempts to stand on its own. Still, Lilo & Stitch is one of Disney’s better live-action adaptations in recent memory, but with the way most of those turned out, that’s not saying much.