The first few minutes of Disney’s live-action remake of Lilo & Stitch represent some kind of worst-case scenario: a shot-for-shot carbon copy of the original film’s intro, of the titular chaotic alien Stitch (voiced by Chris Sanders), a.k.a. Experiment 626, escaping from his jailers and finding his way to Earth. The story plays out similarly in the general sense, as Stitch ends up disguising himself as a particularly weird, hilariously manic dog and getting adopted by orphaned sisters Nani (Sydney Agudong) and Lilo (Maia Kealoa). By this point, audiences may be justified in wondering if the film will be nothing more than a lazy cash-grab.
But once the film moves past its opening sequence, it becomes clear that the source material has been given a new spark. On the more expected side of things, there’s plenty of madcap comedy here, and more of it hits than misses. And that’s largely due to director Dean Fleischer Camp’s ability to make cartoon physics feel believable on screen, as well to a massively entertaining comic duo in Billy Magnussen and Zach Galifianakis’s Pleakley and Jamba.
The beating heart of this story, though, remains the relationship between the sisters and their responsibility to a troublemaking pet. And the force of that beating heart is even stronger here. For one, Kealoa’s Lilo is less the burgeoning weirdo of the animated film than he is akin to a wonderfully imaginative six-year-old communicating with the world in a language of fart jokes, random excited screams, and wild flights of fancy. Agudong’s Nani, for her part, is a girl who has to deal with growing up too fast and is already exhausted with what that entails.
Throughout, Nani and Stitch’s relationship is very much grounded in reality, with the weight of unwanted parenthood stretching things to the breaking point. One of the best lines from the original film is reprised here: “I liked you better as a sister than a mom.” It hurt before, but now it’s tinged with more heartbreak. Even amid all the cartoonish slapstick, the film never loses sight of how Nani is watching her social safety net unravel one thread at a time.
Nani’s weariness begins to weigh heavier on her when Stitch, an alien child of mayhem who also has to realize the responsibility he’s about to inherit, enters the picture. And the film, as written by Chris Kekaniokalani Bright and Mike Van Waes, is at its most poignant when it homes in on Stitch grappling with being good for his new family and his feelings of unworthiness, as in a scene where the critter crawls back into the dog cage where he feels he belongs.
While this live-action remake manages to fulfill its role as a nostalgia play, it’s got its own sense of identity compared to the original animated classic. Here, “ohana” doesn’t just mean family but community, and the film does moving and spirited work in showcasing how crucial it is for us to lift each other up—even when it feels like a cage is all we deserve.
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I thought the movie was funny and silly and great too