Movie Thoughts: Lilo & Stitch (2002)

• Released: 21 June 2002
• Directed by: Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders
• Running time: 1 h 32 min
• Rating 3.5/5

Synopsis

An alien experiment crashes on Hawaii and befriends a troubled family consisting of two sisters, all the while he's being tracked down by the Galactic Federation that wants to get rid of him.

My Thoughts

As I've said before, I really haven't grown up with many of the older Disney human-centric movies before. I missed out on stuff like The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet when they came out and honestly didn't see them until I was into my mid-to-late teens. This is simply because I always had more of an affinity for animals and thus my parents only got me the animal-centric Disney movies such as Bambi, The Fox and the Hound and Lady and the Tramp. Yes, I still blame them for not broadening my horizons because now I had to discover some of these incredibly strong human-centric movies way later when I could've had a chance to grown up with them.

Case in point: I just didn't grow up with Lilo & Stitch, and it's honestly one of the last human-centric Disney movies I watched while trying to catch up a few years ago. And I gotta say, having re-watched it now, it's good. Some elements are really good, even.

I'm talking particularly about the stuff with the sisters here. The stuff with the aliens is okay, kind of just handled in the standard Disney way, but the sister-stuff really elevates this movie for me. It's just such a depressing and real situation. Lilo and Nani's parents died and now the only family they have left is each other, but they have a rough relationship due to Lilo's wild nature and Nani's business trying to balance working and looking after her little sister while the social worker is threatening to separate them.

You really see how these two do absolutely love one another, but ever since their parents died their relationship has just gone south. The characters also just feel so realistic, especially Lilo. I feel like young kid characters often just give off the vibe like they're kids written by adults (which they obviously are), but Lilo's character just comes off like a real kid. She's wild, she has a great sense of imagination, her logic is not perfectly sound, and it all just feels so realistic. I honestly wish we got more well-written kid characters like this. Often times they're just annoying. But Lilo was never annoying, just a "real" kid with real troubles.

I suppose I should talk about the alien stuff as well, since it makes up about half the movie title and movie itself. Stitch is a fun character. I know there's a lot of people that love this guy, but for me he's just a kinda cute protagonist. I don't find him particularly charming, but he does have his adorable moments when he starts to realize the meaning of family and the fact that there's more to life than destruction. 

However, the subplot I absolutely did not care about was the space aliens trying to hunt down Stitch. I get that they wanted to add more stakes to the plot, but to me Lilo and Nani being possibly separated was conflict enough. I just really didn't need any of the "hunt down Stitch" subplot, whether it involved Jumba and Pleakley or Gantu. I didn't find Jumba and Pleakley funny or charming (Pleakley is gnc as fuck though) and Gantu just came off as a very boring and bland villain. For me, it was enough just being about these sisters trying to make their family work while a social worker is threatening them and they also have this destructive blue ball of energy in their midst. 

So overall I do really like the movie, I just could've done without so much alien stuff. The other stuff is great.