Walt Disney Pictures is not well. It’s been a hot minute, hour, fortnight since the house that Walt built has delivered a legitimately impressive work of not just art, but even amiable commerce, with the studio arguably functioning as patient zero for the current plague of IP regurgitation. Limiting a survey to only the last five years, the picture painted is dire: Covid-era streaming properties were utter flops (The One and Only Ivan, Godmothered, Magic Camp); reboots and entries into already half-sunk franchises have predictably turtled (Hocus Pocus 2, Disenchanted, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny); Pixar has continued its toilet bowl revolutions (Lightyear absolutely Molotov-cocktailed the Toy Story franchise); original properties, animated or otherwise, have proved bizarrely anonymous (Wish, Strange World, Young Woman and the Sea); Marvel has begun choking up more and more dust with even subsequent release (finding rock bottom recently with the insomnia-curing Captain America: Brave New World); and, of course, god-awful live-action re-imaginings (and extensions thereof) continued to fart nostalgia and contempt into viewers’ mouths (Mulan, Mufasa, Snow White). The two bright spots during this past half-decade stretch were Robert Zemeckis’ Pinnochio, a much-maligned and imperfect oddity that nonetheless delivered an auteurist singularity lacking from anything else Mickey and co. have given viewers in ages, vacillating between earnest emotionalism and outright horror, and indulging the director’s tech fetish in a thrillingly organic fashion; and Black is King, a visual album and legitimate work of art shepherded by one of the only forces on Earth with more cultural cache than Disney: Beyoncé. None of this is to digress, however, but rather to observe that it takes a cinematic voice as strong as Zemeckis’ or pop power as entrenched as Bey’s — strange bedfellows, to be sure — to even make a noticeable dent in the shield of homogenous content that Disney has been contentedly wielding for what seems like ages now.
Now, if all this sounds like a build-up to declare the studio’s latest hybrid live action remake, Lilo & Stitch, a stealth masterpiece… well, it’s not. But the film is — quite surprisingly for this 2002 Lilo & Stitch agnostic — amidst the best work Disney has delivered in at least a decade. The general narrative shape remains largely the same as in the original — with a few filips that are destined to rankle pedants, purists, and Disney Adults — and this initially seems like a fatal flaw in the making, as an opening sequence rich in silly intergalactic bureaucratizing suggests another artless, straightforward adaptation rooted in mere avarice. But sitting Dean Fleischer Camp in the director’s chair proves to be a boon for 2025’s Lilo & Stitch. As co-creator of the Marcel the Shell universe and director of the feature film version, Fleischer Camp has a demonstrated comedic flavor, and he grafts that blend of hyper-cuteness and absurdity on top of the original’s more blandly emotional core. This most readily applies to the presentation of Stitch, whose pandemonic nature is dialed-up to full freak-out territory in the new film’s early going. (And not for nothing, the character’s kinetic incorporation into the real-world surroundings is an impressive example of organic CGI work done right.) But the true driving force here is Maia Kealoha as Lilo, delivering arguably the best child performance since Brooklynn Prince in The Florida Project. There’s not a trace of self-consciousness or artificiality in her navigation between wounded self-loathing and youthful anarchy, and her emotional chemistry with a similarly excellent Sydney Elizebeth Agudong as the guilt-ridden and wit’s ended older sister Nani is expertly calibrated.
Of course, this still being a live action Disney remake, there are numerous weaknesses to account for. For starters, the trade-off for the film’s VFX restraint relative to other recent Disney releases (outside of Stitch’s realization, natch) is that there isn’t a lot of visual character to fill that void; it’s certainly possible this is by design, given the economic distress Nani and Lilo are in, but Hawaii has rarely looked so flat and beige on screen. Elsewhere, Zach Galifianakis is leveraged bizarrely against type and entirely wasted as the straight man, in the form of Stitch’s mad scientist creator Dr. Joomba Jookiba (on the other hand, Billy Magnusson runs away as MVP of this comedic duo, managing to contort his physical performance into something even more cartoonish than the animated version of his character, human expert Agent Wendell Pleakley). And then there’s Courtney B. Vance’s CIA agent Cobra Bubbles — Jesus Christ is it hard to accept this name when attached to a walking, talking human actor not playing an alien — who attacks his role entirely po-faced, though this may be because the script withholds any of the levity so amiably disbursed amidst the rest of the cast. Lilo & Stitch also remains a brazen nostalgia trap, and a heart-strings-forward heaping helping of pure mush. But seeing these antics played against real-life performers actually lends them a weight that the original couldn’t muster, and the strong character work means moments of genuinely earned feeling slip through — it will be the truly cold bastard whose throat doesn’t meet lump when Stitch sneaks away to shut himself back in a cage at the dog shelter.
There’s also a fair bit of ire being directed at 2025’s Lilo & Stitch due to a number of perceived controversies, all of which seem to be rooted in some nostalgia-informed neophobia that’s being dressed up as woke warriorism on TikTok and X. (It would be a stretch to suggest any Disney film could have a cult following, but 2002’s Lilo & Stitch probably offers the best imitation.) Still, even for those who don’t worship at the sacred altar of “ohana means family” and understand adaptation to exist outside the realm of carbon copying, perhaps the most accurate praise to be paid Lilo & Stitch comes only in backhanded form. It’s not an impressive film by any stretch of the imagination, but it improves Disney’s abysmal recent batting average by embracing a more minimalist (by comparison) design and embracing a style of humor that isn’t in relentless pursuit of pop referentialism. It’s kind of ugly, but at least it scales back the vomitous green screen chicanery infecting seemingly every other blockbuster hitting megaplexes these days, which allows a human-driven center to more properly emerge. It’s a syrup-coated slice of family-friendly maudlinism, but one driven by the charisma of a child performer who sells the absolute hell out of it. Of course, none of this is to say faith should in any way be restored in the Disney trajectory, but only that based on recent evidence, a Fleischer Camp-directed Stitch Has a Glitch would almost certainly be better than a live action Sleeping Beauty. To be more blunt, and address Disney directly: you did okay, kid, but keep your grubby fucking hands off of The Emperor’s New Groove.
DIRECTOR: Dean Fleischer-Camp; CAST: Maia Kealoha, Jason Scott Lee, Billy Magnussen, Zach Galifianakis, Tia Carrere; DISTRIBUTOR: Walt Disney Pictures; IN THEATERS: May 23; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 48 min.
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