Lilo and Stitch

Ok! Super quick review.

Lilo and Stich is a rather interesting film. With it's rather quirky characters, and great backgrounds it looks and sounds like a lot of fun. Sound great, right? Well....yes. At the same time, however, Lilo and Stitch is also surprisingly mature in the content it provides. We see orphans, the importance of healthy socializing, and the issues that come with a broken home. These rather heavy issues are wrapped up with the bright, fun, backgrounds and softened by a certain fuzzy, little terror named Stitch.

Stitch, who starts out fully evil, is banished for being evil and yet manages to use his superior intelligence to escape to Hawaii. This is where he meets Lilo, and a young orphan who lives with her older sister. We juggle back and forth a bit between Stitch being hunted down by his creator and an alien officer, and Lilo's story involving her and her sister having to prove to a social worker that they can make things work despite having lost their parents.

Once again all of the songs are played over in the background, save for one short lullaby that Lilo's sister, Nani, sings. This lullaby scene is rather sweet and one of the best moments in the film. The 'villain' of the film takes a rather different role as Stitch's pursuers jeopardize Nani's efforts to make things work out with the social worker. While the aliens who are trying to capture stitch would be classified as evil, only one of them really fits the bill while the other is simply a guy trying to do his job.

This film was a large hit, spawning two more direct to video films, and two t.v series before the Stitch-mania started to fade out. Even then, the fuzzy alien is still a rather popular character if not more popular than his film.


3 1/2 / 5