LILO AND STITCH (2025)

When audiences first met ‘Experiment 626’ in 2002, he was a delightful and chaotic novelty and represented a return to form for Walt Disney Pictures with a fresh and heartfelt animated original feature film. Over 20 years later, the fuzzy blue alien masquerading as a shelter pet has been reincarnated; this time in Disney’s latest live-action/CGI remake, Lilo & Stitch.

Drawn from the minds of Chris Sanders (The Wild Robot) and Dean DeBlois (How to Train Your Dragon), the original Lilo & Stitch combined old-school animation techniques like watercolour painted backgrounds with classic family-friendly themes like chosen family, the redemptive power of love and friendship — and the music of Elvis Presley. It charmed audiences at the time and has become a true fan favourite. Sanders and the other creatives behind the original managed to create a completely original story that felt familiar at the same time. Full of quirks and oddity, it delivered a unique movie-going experience while still emphasising the classic magic of 2D hand-drawn animation that Disney is known for.

The basic story in both the original and this one is the same: Experiment 626 (voiced by Chris Sanders) is an alien fugitive who’s escaped the clutches of the United Galactic Federation and crash-landed on the island of Kauaʻi. His creator, the alien scientist Dr Jumba (Zach Galifianakis), and an expert on Earth science, Agent Pleakley (Billy Magnussen), are in close pursuit to recapture him. Elsewhere on that same island, six-year-old Lilo Pelekai (Maia Kealoha) struggles to fit in after the tragic death of her parents. When she sees the spaceship carrying 626 streak across the sky, thinking it’s a shooting star, she wishes for a best friend. The next day, Lilo happens to visit the animal shelter where 626 is hiding from his intergalactic pursuers, and he clumsily poses as a dog so Lilo will adopt and therefore protect him. She names him, you guessed it, Stitch.

Both Lilo and Stitch need a friend, both have a hard time controlling their destructive impulses, and both want desperately to be understood. They are both framed as well-meaning but poorly controlled chaos magnets that want to be “good” but can’t quite bring themselves to stop doing bad things. They face a troubled reality that offers little comfort for outsiders, and both feel the sting of rejection because of their differences. It’s a clever concept that sets up the film’s touching thesis: doing bad things does not make you bad.

Over the course of the film, Stitch fights for his freedom and struggles with the burgeoning feelings of love and attachment he feels for Lilo and her older sister Nani (Sydney Agudong). Lilo, in turn, sees Stitch as a way to heal her broken family. Nani is now Lilo’s sole guardian and is not sure she can keep custody of Lilo for long, a fragility that Lilo senses deeply. Famously, Stitch becomes her ohana, a Hawaiian word that represents family both by blood and by choice. It’s a touching foundation that draws on Disney’s long legacy of sad orphan tales, but with the added benefit of cultural specificity that is often overlooked.

It’s a sweet buddy comedy about two misfits grappling with what it means to be different, grounded with the heavy realities of loss and grief. It’s also a sci-fi fantasy loaded with slapstick humour and plenty of tear-jerker moments. The film, directed by Dean Fleischer Camp (Marcel the Shell with Shoes On) from a screenplay by Mike Van Waes and Chris Kekaniokalani Bright, is deft at moving between all these different modes, mostly because it respects the source material enough not to mess with what works. But the trap with trying to recapture the magic of the original film is that it prevents you from taking risks and ends up draining the film of its own magic entirely. Sadly, Lilo & Stitch is no exception, and so this is not an exceptional adaptation.

The film still retains enough protein to hold an audience’s attention. The story is as powerful and emotional as it’s fun and silly, and this latest version does not pull punches with its heavier moments. Lilo and Nani are at real risk of being separated, and that reality is much more fleshed out in this newer iteration and handled sensitively. Nani is also given a much more detailed backstory, as we learn that she gave up on her dreams of going to college on the mainland to study marine biology so she could stay home and care for her sister. This raises the stakes considerably and highlights the story of a family living on the edge of poverty, but still not lacking in humour or humanity, which is a much-needed corrective to Disney’s usual fairy tale fare.

The film’s climax is also greatly expanded, with some added beats and dramatic turns sure to soften even the most cold-hearted viewer. The ending gets an update, in a way that feels satisfactory, if a bit unnecessary. There are added set pieces like Stitch’s crash landing followed by him crashing a wedding in pursuit of cake, a new phenomenon the extraterrestrial can’t resist, and more screen time given to Jumba and Pleakley as a parallel comedy duo to Lilo and Stitch. Fans of the original will no doubt be pleased to see the requisite cameos of actors from the original voice cast, including Chris Sanders returning to voice this alien creation.

But as with all of these lavish and maximalist live-action remakes, Disney handed this film’s creators a massive budget and a nearly impossible task. Balancing the desire to hold on to what people loved about the 2002 film with the need to distinguish itself from it at the same time makes for a tiresome rehashing of something that was delightfully imperfect to begin with. Not only that, but the warm, personal detail of traditional animation is glossed over in CGI-heavy studio offerings, which seems a marker of a general lack of imagination industry-wide. It’s a maddening practice that shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.

Walt Disney Pictures, perhaps more than any other major studio, is hyper-focused on the past. Over the past decade, the studio has remade a dozen of its most beloved animated classics, hoping to capitalise on the nostalgia adult audiences have for the films of their childhoods, and to introduce their illustrious IP to a younger generation.

These remakes do big business at the box office, with four in recent memory grossing over $1BN globally. The critical reception, however, has been decidedly mixed. Their financial success is undeniable, but their cultural dominance and corporate veneer make what was once groundbreaking entertainment that celebrated the artistry of world-class animators feel like junk food.

It’s hard not to be a bit cynical about the never-ending remakes and re-adaptations; they somehow feel inevitable and inexplicable at the same time. Inevitable because it’s only logical on some level that Disney would want to keep profiting off of its already successful stories. Inexplicable because the studio that once prided itself on making magic has wholly committed to wringing every last drop of it from its slate. But, money talks. Already, Lilo & Stitch has had one of the biggest opening weekends of the year at the box office, proving, for better or worse, that the hit parade of updated classics marches on. It may not always be good to be bad, but it sure pays.

USA • AUSTRALIA • CANADA | 2025 | 108 MINUTES | 2.39:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: Dean Fleischer Camp.
writers: Chris Kekaniokalani Bright & Mike Van Waes (based on ‘Lilo & Stitch’ by Chris Sanders & Dean DeBlois).
starring: Sydney Elizebeth Agudong, Billy Magnussen, Hannah Waddingham, Chris Sanders (voice), Courtney B. Vance, Zach Galifianakis & Maia Kealoha.