Psycho's Movie Reviews #411: Lilo And Stitch (2002)

Lilo & Stitch is a 2002 American animated science fiction comedy-drama film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The 42nd Disney animated feature film, it was written and directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois in their directorial debuts. It features Daveigh Chase and Sanders as the voices of the title characters, and also features the voices of Tia Carrere, David Ogden Stiers, Kevin McDonald, Ving Rhames, Jason Scott Lee, and Kevin Michael Richardson. It was also the second of three Disney animated feature films (the first being Mulan, followed by Brother Bear) that were produced primarily at the Florida animation studio in Disney's Hollywood Studios (then named "Disney-MGM Studios" during its production) at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida. It was officially released on June 21, 2002, to positive reviews and was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 75th Academy Awards.

The film's story revolves around two eccentric and mischievous individuals: a six (later seven)-year-old Hawaiian girl named Lilo Pelekai, who is raised by her older, young adult-aged sister Nani after their parents died in a car accident, and a blue extraterrestrial koala-like creature called Experiment 626, who is adopted by Lilo as her "dog" and renamed "Stitch". Stitch, who is genetically engineered by his mad scientist creator to cause chaos and destruction, initially uses Lilo to avoid being captured by an intergalactic federation, but the two individuals develop a close bond through the Hawaiian concept of ʻohana, or extended family. This bond causes Stitch to reconsider and later defy his intended destructive purpose in order to keep his family together.

The success of the film spawned a franchise, including three direct-to-video sequels, starting with Stitch! The Movie, and three television series, including the sequel series Lilo & Stitch: The Series and spin-offs Stitch! and Stitch & Ai.

Plot

On Kauaʻi, Hawaii, young and rambunctious, yet eccentric Lilo Pelekai struggles to be taken care of by her older sister, Nani, since their parents died. One day, social worker Cobra Bubbles expresses increasing concern about whether or not Nani can take adequate care of Lilo. Since Lilo's hula classmates have ostracized her, Nani decides to let her adopt a dog. At the animal shelter, Lilo immediately takes a keen interest in a small blue sentient alien criminal named Experiment 626, who is impersonating a dog after being taken in at the shelter. Experiment 626 is exceptionally strong and intelligent but also tends to cause chaos. Despite Nani's doubts, Lilo adopts and renames 626 "Stitch" and shows him around the island. That evening, at the restaurant where Nani works, extraterrestrial mad scientist Dr. Jumba Jookiba, who was recently arrested by the Galactic Federation after making Stitch, and his partner, Agent Wendell Pleakley, the council's Earth 'expert', unsuccessfully attempt to capture Stitch. The ensuing destructive chaos is blamed on Stitch, which results in Nani getting fired. The next day, Cobra Bubbles warns Nani that he will have to place Lilo with a foster family if she doesn't find another job. However, Stitch's antics while evading his two pursuers persistently ruin Nani's chances of finding work.

Nani's friend David Kawena invites her, Lilo, and Stitch to enjoy a day of surfing and beach fun. While Nani, Lilo, and Stitch ride a huge wave, Jumba makes one final effort to capture Stitch from underwater, causing Stitch to unintentionally pull Lilo underwater. They survive, but Cobra witnesses this event and tells Nani that, although she means well, it means that Lilo will have to be taken away if Nani doesn't find another job. Seeing how much trouble he has caused, a remorseful Stitch runs off into the night. The next morning, the Galactic Federation's leader, the Grand Councilwoman, fires Jumba and Pleakley from their assignment and gives it to the galaxy's oversized militant captain, Captain Gantu (incidentally freeing Jumba to pursue Stitch using less covert methods). Meanwhile, David informs Nani of a job opportunity, which she excitedly rushes off to pursue. Stitch, hiding in the nearby woods, encounters Jumba, who chases him back to Nani's house. A fight ensues, which blows up the house; Cobra arrives to collect Lilo and take her away.

As Nani and Cobra argue, Lilo runs away into the woods and finds Stitch, who shamefully reveals his alien identity before they are captured by Gantu. Stitch manages to escape from Gantu's ship and is confronted by Nani, who had witnessed Lilo's kidnapping. Before he can explain, Jumba and Pleakley capture Stitch themselves. Nani demands that they help her rescue Lilo, but Jumba and Pleakley insist they only came for Stitch. When Nani breaks down, Stitch reminds her about ʻohana, a term for "family" he learned from Lilo earlier. Stitch convinces Jumba to help rescue Lilo. Jumba, Pleakley, Stitch, and Nani board Jumba's personal spaceship and chase after Gantu, rescuing Lilo. Back on the shore, the Grand Councilwoman arrives on Earth preparing to take Stitch into custody. She retires Gantu for his failure to capture Stitch, and blames Jumba for the mess. Before Stitch goes into the spaceship, he tells the Councilwoman how he found his broken but good family and how much 'ohana means to them. Lilo then insists that, because she paid for Stitch at the shelter and has a stamped receipt to show for it, Stitch is her pet under local law. Taking him away would be tantamount to stealing. Rather impressed with Stitch's newfound civility and empathy, the Councilwoman reverses the Federation's prior decision and decrees that Stitch will live in a peaceful exile on Earth, entrusted to Lilo and Nani's care. She then tells Cobra, revealed to be a former CIA agent that she previously met in 1973 at Roswell, that the family will be under the care of the Galactic Federation. Lilo, Nani, and their newfound friends rebuild their house, and Jumba and Pleakley become members of Nani, Lilo, and Stitch's family, all building a new life together.

Production

Development

Production of Lilo & Stitch began with then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner deciding that, in the wake of a number of high-profile and large-budget Disney animated features during the mid-1990s, the studio might try its hand at a smaller and less expensive film. The idea was inspired by the production of Dumbo, an economically-made 1941 Walt Disney film produced in the wake of the more expensive Pinocchio and Fantasia. Chris Sanders, a head storyboard artist at Disney Feature Animation, was approached to pitch an idea. Sanders had created the character of Stitch in 1985 for an unsuccessful children's book pitch, and had to now develop a concept that featured the character in an animated film. The story line required a remote, non-urban location, so the movie was originally intended to take place in Kansas. Sanders's decision to change the film's setting to the Hawaiian island of Kauaʻi was an important choice in defining the plot more clearly. No other animated feature had ever taken place on any of the Hawaiian islands before. In Sanders's words:

"Animation has been set so much in ancient, medieval Europe — so many fairy tales find their roots there, that to place it in Hawaiʻi was kind of a big leap. But that choice went to color the entire movie, and rewrite the story for us."

Writing

Dean DeBlois, who had co-written Mulan (1998) with Chris Sanders, was brought on to co-write and co-direct Lilo & Stitch, while Disney executive Clark Spencer was assigned to produce. Unlike several previous and concurrent Disney Feature Animation productions, the film's pre-production team remained relatively small and isolated from upper management until the film went into full production. The character and set designs were based upon Sanders's personal artistic style.

While the animation team visited Kauaʻi to research the locale, their tour guide explained the meaning of ʻohana as it applies to extended families. This concept of ʻohana became an important part of the movie. DeBlois recalls:

"No matter where we went, our tour guide seemed to know somebody. He was really the one who explained to us the Hawaiian concept of ʻohana, a sense of family that extends far beyond your immediate relatives. That idea so influenced the story that it became the foundation theme, the thing that causes Stitch to evolve despite what he was created to do, which is destroy."

The island of Kauaʻi had also been featured in such films as Raiders of the Lost Ark, and those from the Jurassic Park trilogy. The Disney animators faced the daunting task of meshing the film's plot, which showed the impoverished and dysfunctional life that many Hawaiians lived during the then-recent economic downturn, with the island's serene beauty. The actors voicing the film's young adults, Nani and David, were Tia Carrere, a local of Honolulu, and Jason Scott Lee, who is of Hawaiian descent and was raised in Hawaii. The voice actors assisted with rewriting the Hawaiian characters' dialogue in the proper colloquial dialect, and also with the task of adding Hawaiian slang terms.

One innovative and unique aspect of the film is its strong focus on the relationship between two sisters: Lilo and Nani. Making the relationship between sisters into a major plot element is very rare in American animated films.

Design and Animation

In a deviation from several decades' worth of Disney features, Sanders and DeBlois chose to use watercolour painted backgrounds for Lilo & Stitch, as opposed to the traditional gouache technique. While watercolours had been used for the early Disney animated shorts, as well as the early Disney features Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Pinocchio (1940), and Dumbo (1941), the technique had been largely abandoned by the mid-1940s in favour of less complicated media such as gouache. Sanders preferred that watercolours be used for Lilo & Stitch to evoke both the bright look of a storybook and the art direction of Dumbo, requiring the background artists to be trained in working with the medium.

The animation itself was all based on 2D work as the budget lacked funds to incorporate computer generated imagery. The character designs were based around Sanders's personal drawing style, eschewing the traditional Disney house style. Because of the limited budget, details like pockets or designs on clothing were avoided in the animation process, and as they could not afford to do shadows through much of the film, many of the scenes took place in shaded areas, saving the use of shadows for more pivotal scenes.

The film's extraterrestrial elements, such as the spaceships, were designed to resemble marine life, such as whales and crabs. One planned scene in the film involved Stitch hijacking a Boeing 747 airliner and piloting it in a cartoonish manner through a city. However, following the September 11 attacks with only a few weeks left in production, this scene was revamped at a large cost to have Stitch steal Jumba and Pleakley's alien craft instead, revamping the airliner's design to look like an alien spacecraft, though the final design still has engines that resembled the 747's jet engines, according to Sanders.

Even after this adjustment, the team had enough budget for about two additional minutes of animation, which was used to create the epilogue scene of Lilo, Nani, and Stitch becoming a new family.

Marketing

Teaser trailers for the film parody trailers for other Disney films (three of which Sanders previously worked on) from the Disney Renaissance: Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Little Mermaid and The Lion King. These are called "Inter-Stitch-als" and are featured on Disney's official site as well as on the film's respective DVD release. The original actors were brought back to reprise their roles and were shocked when asked to act negatively towards Stitch. The trailers also include the AC/DC song track "Back in Black." In the United Kingdom, Lilo & Stitch trailers and TV ads featured a cover of Elvis' song "Suspicious Minds", performed by Gareth Gates, who became famous on the UK TV program Pop Idol. In the US, "Hound Dog" was used for both theatrical and TV trailers. The marketing campaign presented Stitch as the sort of "Disney Family Black Sheep". As a promotional campaign, comics of Lilo & Stitch were run in Disney Adventures prior to the film's release. The comics detailed events leading up to the film for both title characters, including the creation and escape of Stitch. These events were later contradicted by the sequel Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch rendering the comics non-canonical, but is notable to the series as introducing Experiment 625, Reuben, who was made a main character in the subsequent movies and TV series. The comic series has been released as a collective volume titled Comic Zone Volume 1: Lilo & Stitch.

Deleted Scenes

Several major elements of the film changed during production. Originally, Stitch was the leader of an intergalactic gang, and Jumba was one of his former cronies summoned by the Intergalactic Council to capture Stitch. Test audience response to early versions of the film resulted in the change of Stitch and Jumba's relationship to that of creation and creator, respectively.

The biggest change came to the film's third act, which had Stitch, Nani, Jumba and Pleakley hijacking a Boeing 747 jet from Lihue Airport to save Lilo; the scene had the quartet chasing Gantu through downtown Honolulu, scraping against buildings and coming dangerously close to the ground. After the terrorist attacks occurred on the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001, the film's climax was completely reworked so that they instead flew Jumba's spaceship through the mountains of Kauaʻi. This revision was done primarily by replacing the CGI model of the 747 with that of Jumba's spaceship, with only a few shots in the sequence fully re-animated.

Another scene that was deleted was one of Lilo's attempts to make Stitch into a model citizen by notifying tourists on the beach about the tsunami warning sirens, which she knows are being tested that day. The original version of Jumba attacking Stitch in Lilo's home was found to be too violent by test audiences, and was revised to make it more comedic. There was also a scene in which Lilo introduces Stitch to Pudge the fish, which ultimately leads to the fish's death. Lilo then takes Pudge's body to the same graveyard where her parents were buried, and thus Stitch learns the consequences of his actions and gains a better understanding of mortality.

A scene was removed where Nani brings Lilo pizza and then Lilo tells herself a bedtime story about a friendly and stinky bear named Toaster. It was replaced with the scene where Lilo and Nani talk about being family because test audiences had mistaken Nani for Lilo's mother. The trial scene originally had Stitch as the defendant, and Jumba is not present. This was changed because the film directors thought the Intergalactic Council had to blame him for creating Stitch.

Release/Reception/Box Office

Lilo & Stitch received largely positive reception. Rotten Tomatoes reported that the film has an 86% "Certified Fresh" approval rating based on 147 reviews, with an average score of 7.3/10. The site's consensus reads, "Edgier than traditional Disney fare, Lilo and Stitch explores issues of family while providing a fun and charming story." The film has also earned a score of 73 on Metacritic, indicating "generally favourable reviews". Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4 and wrote "It's one of the most charming feature-length cartoons of recent years—funny, sassy, startling, original and with six songs by Elvis". The film's success spawned a Lilo & Stitch franchise, with three sequel films, three television series, and a live-action remake. This movie has more Elvis Presley performed songs in it than any other movie, including movies that Elvis Presley himself was in.

Peter M. Nichols states that through the character of Nani and her struggles, the film appeals to older children better than such attempts by the studio to do so as The Emperor's New Groove, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, and Treasure Planet.

Lilo & Stitch opened in second place with $35.3 million in its first weekend, less than $500,000 behind the film Minority Report. In its second week, it fell to third, again behind the Steven Spielberg film coming in second after Mr. Deeds. As soon as Men in Black II was released, Lilo & Stitch plunged into fourth place. Despite this, the film continued to draw in families while other major summer blockbusters like Spider-Man and Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones ruled the box office. Additionally, it would go on to compete against the Warner Bros. live-action/computer-animated film Scooby-Doo. The film earned $145.8 million in the United States and Canada, and $127.3 million internationally, totalling $273.1 million globally. It was the second-highest-grossing animated film of 2002, behind 20th Century Fox's Ice Age. They were the only two animated films to approach the $100 million mark that year. Box Office Mojo estimates that the film sold over 25 million tickets during its original run.

Budget $80 million

Box office $273.1 million

My Review

Project "Six-Two-Six" is deemed too dangerous by the "Grand Council." A hideous genetic creation from the lab of mad-scientist "Jumba," (David Ogden Stiers) project Six-Two-Six is put on board a space ship to be banished to a nice little deserted asteroid, where he can live out the rest of his days. On the way there, project Six-Two-Six takes over the ship, and then escapes using what looks like a space squad car. He eventually crash lands on one of the islands of Hawaii (Kauai?) where a little five-year old orphan girl named "Lilo" (Daviegh Chase) finds him in a dog pound (don't ask) and takes him home as her new pet dog, "Stitch" (Chris Sanders). Of course the Grand Council soon realizes what has happened, and sends agent "Pleakley" (Kevin McDonald) along with the mad-scientist to the island to recapture experiment Six-Two-Six.

And so begins one of the most unusual and creative animated films from the Disney studios. Featuring a completely new style of drawing, and backgrounds that look like watercolour paintings, Disney is taking a bold step in trying something a little different. The artwork seems like a combination of "Winnie-the-Pooh" and Saturday morning cartoons. The dialogue and slapstick comedy is much more reminiscent of Warner Brother's beloved "Loony-Tunes." Except for a handful of well chosen Elvis Presley songs, and some beautiful Hawaiian music, there are none of the musical numbers that one would expect to find in a typical Disney film. (I, for one, didn't miss them.)

We soon find out that Lilo is an orphan, living with her older sister Nani (Tia Carrere) in what could be comfortably called a "dysfunctional" household. Nani is trying hard to make ends meet and be a mother to her young sister, who is having a very difficult time adjusting to life without her mom and dad. The creators of the film do a superb job with the character of Lilo, making you identify with her loneliness and isolation without making it depressing. They also very accurately portray the problems with an older sibling raising a younger, and the friction and fighting that results is typical of what one would find in this sort of arrangement. The subject matter is very mature, but the animators do a fantastic job bringing it home to a level that small children can appreciate.

Nani decides Lilo needs a dog to keep her company, so off to the kennel they go. Lilo just falls in love with Stitch, the "talking dog," and decides to take him for a pet. It is with this most unlikely of characters that Lilo can find someone to confide in, to share her passions with (like Elvis), and to share the pain and sorrow that comes from being without parents.

Stitch was created by the mad-scientist Jumba to be an evil little monster, but in the care of Lilo, he realizes his own aloneness, and his need for love and acceptance. So the evil little alien allows Lilo to take him by the hand, dress him up as Elvis, and go surfing. (Stitch's one weakness in the inability to swim, so for him to go surfing is a surprising concession to the little girl's whims.) His original motive for being "nice" to Lilo was to avoid the agents sent to recapture him, but soon he realizes that Lilo and Nani mean more to him than just sanctuary.

Disney makes a point in all their trailers and commercials to show Stitch as the Rodney Dangerfield of animated characters: he don't get any respect. Other than Lilo, everyone else in the film, including his creator Jumba, is trying to capture and/or kill him. Even Lilo's sister finds several opportunities to take out her frustrations on the mixed-up little alien. At first, it's rather amusing, since Stitch is about the most obnoxious Disney character of all time, but after a while, you start feeling sorry for the little guy, and start hoping that he can find the love and acceptance he's longing for.

I've often wondered why Disney's recent animated films cannot reach the level that Pixar's CGI creations do effortlessly ("Toy Story," "Monsters Inc."). Disney's cartoons seem dull and lifeless compared to the fun and action that Pixar delivers on a regular basis. Well, it seems as if the Disney animators are finally being infected by some of the magic that comes from their computer animation partners. "Lilo & Stitch" demonstrates that there is still some life left in that old art form that Walt made so famous many years ago. But more importantly, this little gem has a lot of heart. You find yourself caring for the orphaned Lilo, you find yourself hoping that Stitch can fin d a place in a family, and you hope that big sister Nani can find a way to keep social worker "Mr. Bubbles" (Ving Rhames) from taking Lilo away to a foster home.

There are some really big themes being tackled in this film, such as unconditional love, the need to belong to a group or community, self sacrifice, and family unity. The animators handles all these extremely well, and you find yourself getting a lesson in philosophy as well as being entertained. Yet the one theme that Disney pushes in all their advertising, and several times during the course of the film, is the oft repeated phrase: "Ohana means family, and family means NO ONE gets left behind." This is a theme one finds emphasized in the recent combat films "Black Hawk Down" and "We Were Soldiers," but isn't something you often find in a animated feature! That one little phrase, "no one gets left behind," has enough philosophical and theological weight to fill a college text book. It means that everyone, no matter what you may think of them, has value, and that there is no such thing an "expendable" person. A better lesson for young children would be difficult to find. 10/10!!!!

{The best songs in this film are as followed}

{Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride}

https://youtu.be/JUq8i_NGytE?list=TLPQMDcwNDIwMjIizqrznHWNEQ

{Burnin Love}

https://youtu.be/fzwXnSsZwTY?list=TLPQMDcwNDIwMjIizqrznHWNEQ