Lilo & Stitch (2025) review

Dir. Dean Fleischer Camp

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★

It’s too bad Facebook lacks a feature to “Mark Yourself Safe” from Disney live-action remakes. I’ve successfully sidestepped them for over five years, but broke that streak this afternoon when I bit the bullet to see Lilo & Stitch. Blame (or credit, depending on how you measure the glass) is largely due to director Dean Fleischer Camp, the same man behind the quirky little internet marvel known as Marcel the Shell with Shoes On and the feature-film adaptation. Camp brought such a cute, genuine sincerity to that diminutive character that I had a good feeling he’d do the same with bringing one of Disney’s best animated films of the 2000s into the real world.

I’ve avoided the Disney live-action remakes for a number of reasons. For one, I don’t care to see material born for animation brought into the real world. Did the dead-eyed animals in the 2018 adaptation of The Lion King stir you the way the doe-eyed, helpless Simba’s did in its animated counterpart? Was Robert Zemeckis’ time best suited to giving us yet another adaptation of Pinocchio? America loves dogs, but why did we need to see real-life canines romantically (?) slurping spaghetti in a Lady and the Tramp remake so unremarkable it barely made the home-page of Disney+? Once in a blue moon, a Christopher Robin would come along and give us something meaningful to watch and ponder, but for all the reasons I’ve lost sleep over the last half-decade, missing remakes like The Little Mermaid and Snow White haven’t been a contributing factor whatsoever.

The original Lilo & Stitch was marketed so beautifully, positing Stitch as the gangly, feral, freak misfit of the cuddly Disney library of characters. One of the film’s posters had everyone from Aladdin to Timon and Dopey looking at the little gremlin with horror and disgust. Bringing Stitch into our world wasn’t necessary, but Camp and screenwriters Chris Kekaniokalani Bright and Mike Van Waes transition well, so much so that even most of the changes work in the film’s favor.

Newcomer Maia Kealoha stars as Lilo, a little girl living in Hawaii under the guardianship of her older sister, Nani (Sydney Elizebeth Agudong), ever since the death of their parents. Lilo is spunky, but ill-behaved, and that renders her a pariah amongst her island peers. The stress of keeping the house tidy is getting to Nani, and a social worker (Tia Carrere, voice of Nani in the original film) is threatening to move Lilo into a place with more adequate care. Lilo soon gets her wish for a loyal friend, a strange blue doglike creature (voiced by Chris Sanders) she finds at a local shelter.

While Lilo, Nani, and everyone else tries to convince themselves that the stout little menace, who is eventually named “Stitch,” is a dog, he’s actually a rogue space experiment who was designed with chaos in mind. Fleeing to Earth after successfully escaping intergalactic custody, Stitch is hunted by his mad scientist creator Dr. Jumba Jookiba (voiced/played by Zach Galifianakis) and a cyclopean named Agent Pleakley (Billy Magnussen).

For no good reason, Jumba and Pleakley have been robbed of their distinctive voices, though Magnussen surprisingly plays Pleakley with a better handle on cartoonish behavior than Galifianakis. On Earth, the two goofs elect to use holograms to make them look like humans in order to blend into their surroundings. The transition of aliens acting like humans to live action is awkward, but marginally effective with time.

Squeezed into the narrative awkwardly, but given time to find their way include David (Kaipo Dudoit), the avid surfer, who lives next door to Nani and Lilo; Tūtū (Amy Hill), David’s grandmother, new to the story, who offers wisdom and actually makes meaningful contributions; and Cobra Bubbles (Courtney B. Vance). If you recall, Bubbles was the social worker in the original film, though his former line of work as a CIA agent showed through like a vodka bottle. Here, he is still an active agent. Though it is pleasant enough to see Carrere return to the series in some capacity, her role as a social worker and Bubbles as a separate entity effectively splits one character into two, and thus drains the presence of Bubbles as a whole.

Kealoha is every bit Stitch’s equal, matching his rabid energy in many scenes. One of my favorites comes during a montage of Nani’s job interviews. Logically, Nani can’t leave Lilo and Stitch in the care of Tūtū during these important interviews because it would deprive us of watching Lilo try to coach Stitch on how to behave, using the A-frame chalkboards often utilized by restaurants. She tries to get him to resist the urge to break glass, and instruct him on how to clean windows, not with his snot, but with window cleaner.

Just like those behind the later Child’s Play films/TV series discovered that Brad Dourif was irreplaceable, it’s wonderful to hear Chris Sanders, the co-creator of this franchise, reprise the voice of Stitch. Sanders has the rare ability of contorting scratchy gibberish into words. Both seeing and hearing Stitch on the big screen led me to realize how the Minions of Despicable Me were undoubtedly inspired by the simultaneously intelligible and incoherent blathering of the creature also known as “Experiment 626.”

Shot on location in Hawaii, Lilo & Stitch has a beautiful set design. This is one of merely a handful of Disney live action remakes that fittingly brings to life what was once a cartoon. The setting isn’t only lush with trees, nature, and aqua water, but it’s appropriately utilized as a sun-soaked paradise with multiple avenues for outdoor shenanigans. The score is faithful to the original with infectious Hawaiian ditties as well as a copious amount of Elvis, even concluding with another contemporary cover of “Burning Love.”

As predictable as these live action remakes can be, one thing you might not be ready for is the significant curveball ending Bright and Waes throw. It’s initially upsetting, in a narrative sense as opposed to an external change, until you realize how we’ve officially reached the point in technological progress that portals, tablets, and webcams can all combine to do what the cartoon Lilo and Nani probably thought impossible back in the era of VHS.

While I still plan to avoid films of this ilk in the same way I do Marvel’s latest installment of a “who’s who of who’s he?,” my picky and choosiness has rewarded me with a film that not so much exceeded but met my expectations as the best possible version of itself. If that sounds good to you, Lilo & Stitch is worth your time. If you have kids who have seen Stitch act a menace in trailers for the last couple months, the decision is probably already made for you.

My review of Lilo & Stitch (2002)

Starring: Maia Kealoha, Sydney Elizebeth Agudong, Zach Galifianakis, Billy Magnussen, Amy Hill, Courtney B. Vance, Kaipo Dudoit, Tia Carrere. Voiced by: Chris Sanders, Zach Galifianakis, and Billy Magnussen. Directed by: Dean Fleischer Camp.