With Lilo & Stitch, Have Disney Finally Got a Remake Right?
Who wouldn’t love hula dancing with a fuzzy blue alien in the Hawaiian breeze?
good.film
7 days ago
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Noticed the cinema feels like the 1990s again? You’re not alone: it’s remake central out there! For mega-studios like Disney, the cartoons we loved as kids are more than memories; they’re massively valuable IP that can be dusted off, re-shot and re-launched for a whole new Gen of kids (and their parents, AKA the ones with the money). But while there’s been a whole lot of nostalgia shoved into cinemas lately, recapturing the spirit of a movie that millions adore is easier said than done…
Remember the online firestorm over Disney casting – GASP! – an African-American actress as The Little Mermaid? Or the savage online trolling they got for picking mixed-race Rachel Zegler as their new Snow White? According to industry analysts, these two films alone will ultimately lose Disney around $120 million. Yep, it’s a financial minefield bringing a beloved animated classic into the real world (don’t feel too bad for Disney – they’re still worth over $200 billion).
Walt and the gang’s latest remake really might finally be on the money. Enter Lilo & Stitch: a live-action take on the tale of a Hawaiian girl whose life is tipped upside-down by the arrival of a mischievous (but loveable, natch) blue alien. While it mightn’t be the obvious choice, it’s a decent candidate for a remake. The original 2002 animation was a modest hit with characters that families fell in love with – but it wasn’t SO MASSIVE that the studio’s every decision would be brutally analyzed like the Little Mermaid fiasco.
What’s Lilo & Stitch About? It’s the wildly funny and touching story of a lonely Hawaiian girl and the fugitive alien who helps to mend her broken family.
Who Directed Lilo & Stitch? Dean Fleischer Camp
Who Stars in Lilo & Stitch? Maia Kealoha, Zach Galifianakis, Chris Sanders, Billy Magnussen, Hannah Waddingham
Where Can I See Lilo & Stitch? Lilo & Stitch is out now in Australian cinemas! Get discount movie tickets to see it for less at Dendy, Event, Village and Hoyts Cinemas right here. $1 from every Good Tix sold goes to Barnados Australia, supporting Aussie foster children.
So far, so good. Summing up Lilo & Stitch’s opening weekend, The Hollywood Reporter raves that the film “blew away all expectations with a record-smashing, four-day domestic debut of $183 million, and a jaw-dropping $341 million globally… no one imagined it would hit these heights. The reason? Interest exploded among teenage girls and younger women adults who grew up on the first movie.” Well played, Disney! Maybe 23 years is the perfect gap between watching a childhood staple and having little Stitches of your own?
Directed by Marcel the Shell helmer Dean Fleischer Camp, the film is vivacious and super cute (Stitch is right up there with all-time I wanna hug him! character designs). But there’s an undeniable thematic weight to the story, too – Lilo (Maia Kealoha) and her older sister Nani (Sydney Agudong) are orphans, having lost their parents in a car accident. Besides their grief, Lilo struggles with belonging and bullying, while Nani is torn between raising Lilo and her own personal growth, like studying marine biology. These threads give L&S more staying power than, say, the more disposable antics of another blue alien troublemaker that kids adore.
How does Lilo & Stitch get started?
In deep space, actually! On the planet Turo, where we find out that Stitch isn’t really a space koala that’s accidentally gone through the wash with your new jeans. He’s an illegal genetic experiment (number 626, to be exact) who’s been causing mayhem, and gets sentenced to exile – in other words, shot through the galaxy to crash-land in tropical Hawaii. Um, can WE be exiled, please?
Because the opening is fully animated, it’s a surprising breath of fresh air when we’re soon submerged in the real-life tropical waters of Kauai, swimming with 6 year old Lilo. It’s obvious straight away that she’s connected to nature and her Indigenous Hawaiian heritage. In the same way that Moana’s filmmakers went the extra mile to respect Polynesian culture and stories, Disney collaborated with Hawaiian cultural consultant Lāiana Kanoa-Wong to make sure Lilo & Stitch authentically nailed Hawaii’s language, colours and customs.
So it’s a painful juxtaposition when the jobs-bills-household treadmill keeps smacking Nani in the face. At just 18, she’s barely an adult, struggling to be a sibling, a breadwinner and a defacto parent to her younger sister. Visits from their case worker Mrs. Kekoa (Tia Carrere) just add to that stress, but she’s not the villain of the piece. I can see you're trying, she tells Nani, but my job is to see that Lilo is in a stable environment. Stable, you say? Cue a cheeky blue alien with a devious streak, genetically designed to destabilise their world like a fuzzy tornado.
What’s the concept of “Ohana” explored in Lilo & Stitch?
In Hawaiian, Ohana means family, and it’s more than just a word or a biological connection – it’s a concept. The idea that no-one gets left behind, no-one gets forgotten. It’s the iconic phrase that comes up a few times through the movie, first to be challenged, then reinforced.
For Nani and Lilo, their family was instantly cut in half and unmoored with their parents’ death. And when Nani tries to remind Lilo of Ohana, she pushes back: We were left behind! She’s still only 6, and she feels abandoned and ostracized. It’s easy to see why she latches onto Stitch when she discovers him hiding at the local animal shelter. When they hug, the look on Lilo’s face is palpable. He’s bringing her a sense of comfort she hasn’t felt since losing her parents.
Remember, Stitch (or Experiment 626, to use his real “name”) doesn’t have a family either. Watch him taking cues from an adoption poster on the wall of the animal shelter, figuring out how to “pose” as loveable so Lilo will adopt him – in other words, the surface idea that you’re only going to be accepted and loved if you’re cute. Of course, the lessons that come later show Stitch (and all the kids watching) that it’s your morals and choices that really matter.
There’s a really sweet scene where Lilo teaches Stitch some Hula, the traditional Hawaiian dance form that tells stories through movement and gestures. In a yoga-like way, the gentleness and concentration of the practice means that Stitch is calm for once, and the two actually bond. It’s another example of Ohana, and a hint that traditions can provide grounding and connection – especially when you feel totally lost.
What does kuleana, or responsibility, mean in Lilo & Stitch?
This is the other Hawaiian tradition that the film embraces: kuleana, or responsibility. Nani has her own goals and dreams – but she’s suddenly been thrust into a position where she’s responsible for Lilo, and earning a living, while processing her own grief. It’s my kuleana to look after you, Nani explains to Lilo. The relationship shift isn’t easy for either of them: I like you better as a sister than a Mum, Lilo snaps, when Nani insists it’s bedtime.
This scenario is more complicated when you consider in Pacific Islander families, there’s often a push-pull between staying knitted within your community, and leaving for the “big smoke” to further your studies or career. Lilo knows her big sister wants to study marine biology – which means moving to California, which would mean foster care for Lilo. Is it selfish for Nani to pursue that goal? On the flip side, isn’t it selfish to ask Nani to give that up?
On a side note, there’s traces of the idea that Nani, the local, has to culturally demote herself to work jobs that entertain white tourists (like The White Lotus). When Stitch’s antics get her fired from her resort job, Nani falls back on her experience as a surfing champ, by taking a part-time job as a surfing instructor for travelers. So even the things Nani’s passionate about get co-opted by the fact she just happened to be born in a tourist hotspot.
When Lilo has a close call in the surf – leading to a hospital visit they can’t pay for – Nani has to face the reality that actually raising Lilo alone might be too much for her. There’s a moment where we’re asked, What if Lilo’s better off being raised by the state than by family – and what if that’s not a bad thing? Clearly that’s true for many kids in real life, and Lilo & Stitch is careful not to position foster care as lesser-than, or siblings like Nani as having “failed”.
One lighter moment comes on a warm night on their deck, when Lilo remembers their Dad taking them camping out here. Nani can’t help but laugh. We weren’t camping, they were fumigating, we had termites! It’s a cute reminder that while we’re often wrapped up in the seriousness of adult situations, kids have an in-built way to make fun fantasies out of them. They don’t see life through adult eyes. Maybe we could use a pair of childlike eyes from time to time!
Is Lilo & Stitch a good movie to explain bullying and belonging?
One of the reasons Lilo & Stitch make such a winning pair is that they both struggle with their feelings of being outsiders. (Guess you kinda get that when you’re an alien grown in a lab). To us, Lilo is spirited and cheeky, but to her classmates She’s so weird.
When Lilo asks her sister, People treat me different – am I bad? Nani’s answer is No, you just do bad things sometimes. So later, when Lilo realises Stitch has no family, she connects the two together: Is that why you act bad sometimes? By introducing the relationship between kids’ behaviour and having a stable family unit, Lilo & Stitch makes the point that it’s often an unfair spiral. Stitch is a maniac because he was designed that way. Lilo “acts out” because of her grief, which labels her as a “troublemaker”, which leads to worse behaviour, like a loop.
Importantly for the little ones watching, Lilo works out that we all deserve the chance to learn from our mistakes, and that what we’ve done in our past – or done to others – needn’t define us for life. Ohana means family, she shares with Stitch, and sometimes family isn’t perfect. But that doesn't mean they aren’t good.
Who plays Lilo in Lilo & Stitch, and how did they find her?
Eight year old Maia Kealoha landed the plum gig, and it’s great casting. Born on Hawaii’s ‘big island’, Kealoha’s authentic aloha spirit is an instant win for the film (and the studio, which was definitely keen to skirt any more casting controversies). It’s working out nicely for Kealoha too, who’s already racked up nearly 400K Instagram followers – on an account managed by her parents, thankfully.
Maia was just five when she threw an audition tape into the mix (check out her cute version of the story here). But Director Dean Fleischer Camp says it was her non-actory-ness that really won her the role. People are really good at detecting when cuteness is a put-on, he told IMDb, so we were looking for a kid who maybe was less experienced [at acting] and someone who we could work with. To put it another way, Maia didn’t just play Lilo – she was Lilo.
That’s echoed by Oscar-winning Māori filmmaker Taika Waititi, whose career has been defined by working with child actors. His advice? Never try to get a kid to pretend they’re someone else.
Off topic, but… My kid is so keen for their own Stitch now! Can I buy a Stitch?
You mean, a blue koala-alien with wanton tendencies for destruction? Not IRL, unfortunately (although the RSPCA has already reported a big spike in enquiries for dogs that “look like Stitch”). As for stuffed toys, of course you can. It wouldn’t be a Disney movie without merch!
Is Lilo & Stitch worth seeing?
Yeah! If you’ve got kids in the 5 to 12 age bracket, Lilo & Stitch is a funny, lively time at the movies that’s thoughtfully designed to do a bit more than just shift stuffed toys. To be honest, it can’t quite match the depth of a modern masterpiece like Flow or The Wild Robot (ironically, The Wild Robot filmmaker Chris Sanders voices Stitch, just like in the 2002 original!). But there’s central concepts here that will be really meaningful for younger audiences – especially those who’ve been ostracized at school, or who have unorthodox living situations at home.
It’s a testament to the movie’s strength that it was actually going to be released straight to Disney+ on streaming, but great scores at test screenings meant the studio gave the green light for a theatrical release instead. Great call: the remake sold more tickets in one weekend than the original did in its entire theatrical run. That’s a lot of kids who’ve had the concept of Ohana reinforced to them in a super engaging way. And hey, if history repeats, that’s a lot of future parents who’ll take their own kids to the next nostalgia blast, 23 years from now.
Lilo & Stitch is out now in Australian cinemas! Get discount movie tickets to see it for less at Dendy, Event, Village and Hoyts Cinemas right here. $1 from every Good Tix sold goes to Barnados Australia, supporting Aussie foster children.
