Lilo & Stitch Review
by Karina Montgomery (karina AT cinerina DOT com)June 21st, 2002
Lilo & Stitch
Matinee with Snacks
The marketing for this film is selling the blue alien Stitch as a sort of a latter-day Tigger - boisterous and mischievous, with a little Bart Simpson thrown in for good measure. What the film really does do is address some pretty serious issues tucked behind some creative alien character animation and the beauty of the Hawaiian islands. Lilo is a little girl, cared for by her big sister, who, like many Disney heroines, is an outsider. Stitch is a genetically designed unstoppable destruction machine. Their worlds collide, lessons are learned, and it all ends up well. This is no shock - it's a Disney movie after all.
But Disney's traditional animation studios have apparently taken a page from Pixar's book, in that kids are not stupid, a romantic story arc is not integral to a children's plotline, and kids need to identify with the protagonist(s). My companion sagely suggested that Stitch's character was meant to address the frustration and loneliness felt by ADD children, as well as thedifficulty their loved ones have in assimilating that child into a "regular" family. So Lilo & Stitch are tackling tough issues, considering there are still jokes where the creature moons through a window or crams food into his mouth.
And I'll say it right now, at one point in the movie I cried like a 5 year old cries when Bambi's mother died, I scrunched up my face and had at it. The kids all around me were rapt and respectful of the serious, moving moment happening on screen. It was beautiful. The characters go through real problems, feel real emotions, and strength gets them through, not a musical number. It's surprisingly adult, even as it has the simple good/bad guy set ups and the occasional animation-makes-it-possible slapstick that Disney has excelled at since the Sorcerer's Apprentice.
It doesn't even look like a Disney movie. Lilo's older sister (voiced by Tia Carrere, not Jennifer Lopez as it sounded) has a healthy, realistic, attractive but desexualized body. The faces are rounder and more different than that studio has produced in decades. The backgrounds are beautiful, delicate watercolors. If you've watched making of specials from that studio, you have no doubt seen the lyrical conceptual drawings from which the bolder paintings and cels eventually come; in this film, everything is muted and delicate and really beautiful. It's not tourism Hawaii, it's native Hawaii. Alan Silvestri's score is the final shimmer. There are also fun Hawaiian songs and Elvis songs and others, but it's no more musical than any live action movie.
I recommend it only shy of Full Price because it doesn't seem to know where it is going at the beginning, and kids might get lost in the story. Used as they are these days to things being spelled out for them, this movie does not kow tow to them in that way. But I loved it and I will see it again and probably own it later.
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These reviews (c) 2002 Karina Montgomery. Please feel free to forward but just credit the reviewer in the text. Thanks.
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