Lilo & Stitch
Time is going to catch up with “Lilo & Stitch.” I really don’t know how it couldn’t. Yes, Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois break a lot of the rules of what traditionally makes a Disney film great, but one it absolutely nails is the emotional component, and matching it with an animation style that shows us something truly special. This was Disney’s last, great cel animated feature film, although there’s definitely some use of the computer here, and over the years, I think it’s going to take its rightful place with some of the studio’s best films.
I don’t remember how long it had been since I watched Sanders and DeBlois’s film prior to watching it for my review, but the film won me over as it did originally to where I had tears in my eyes watching it this time, like I did when I first saw it in 2002. In the day, Stitch won me over absolutely, and I even did a pretty damn good impression of him saying, “This is my family,” for a while. As with Toothless in Sanders and DeBlois’s “How to Train Your Dragon” (a franchise DeBlois has steered on his own with the sequels), Stitch won me over because Stitch runs counter to what an animated hero is supposed to be like. He’s also adorable while doing it, and that helps. Both are voiced by Sanders, and their voices, at key moments, help drive the emotional part of the films.
The film begins in space, and the Galactic Federation is bringing up the scientist, Jumba (David Ogden Stiers), on criminal charges of illegal genetic experimentation. As evidence, they present Experiment 626, who will become Stitch when, after he escapes from custody, he crash lands on Earth, and finds himself taken to the dog pound, where he will be adopted by Lilo (Daveigh Chase), who is trying to get along as a familial unit with her sister, Nani (Tia Carrere), after their parents die in a car crash. Unfortunately, Stitch is a bigger handful than they expect, and with the Federation on his tail, and a child services worker (Ving Rhames) down their necks, something might give and break up Lilo and Nani’s already broken family.
If you haven’t quite figured out, Sanders and DeBlois are playing, quite comfortably, within the structure of Steven Spielberg’s “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial,” but this isn’t another “Mac & Me.” Sanders and DeBlois takes “E.T.’s” notion of a lonely kid who needs a friend, and finds one in an alien, and finds some really subversive beats to play because Stitch is not just a benevolent, friendly alien, but a rowdy, destructive force that was created for just that purpose. Like Elliot with E.T., Lilo is having to teach Stitch about life on Earth, but also has to teach him some manners, as well, and that makes things particularly nasty for Lilo and Nani as they are at a difficult moment in trying to be a family themselves. So while Nani allows Lilo to adopt Stitch as a way of, hopefully, giving her some familial normalcy, with Stitch on the run, and undisciplined, normalcy goes out the window in rapid fashion. But the important thing is, the connection between Lilo and Stitch is genuine, to the point where the change Stitch goes through is earned by the time he speaks to plead his case near the end, it’s as powerful as when E.T. is dying and Elliot is watching it. I had the same reaction now that I had 16 years ago, and it’s a sucker punch that Sanders and DeBlois land effortlessly.
This film does not get enough credit among the recent Disney greats. While it subverts the formula of what we think of a Disney film, it’s just as meaningful, and imaginative, as anything the studio has produced from “The Little Mermaid” on. It just happens to have a scrappy little alien and a spunky little girl at its lead, a wonderful use of Elvis songs along with Alan Silvestri’s score, and a strikingly beautiful water color palate in its animation that makes even the aliens and science-fiction elements fit right in to the Disney style. This isn’t a film for people looking for the same old/same old from Disney, but who wants to see them spread their wings, and stretch what a Disney film is. In time, “Lilo & Stitch” will be seen as a wonderful and original classic that fits right in with the finest the studio has ever done.
