LILO & STITCH (2025) - Mark Reviews Movies

Lilo & Stitch, Disney

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 22, 2025

The Stitch of the original animated film was a unique and hilarious creation, and the story of that film, although a bit too scant to take full advantage of the alien character and its new group of Earth-bound friends, was equally weird and warm. The makers of Lilo & Stitch, a live-action remake of the 2002 version, have somehow missed the point of both the humor of its otherworldly star and the emotional center of this tale.

The first part is almost to be expected as soon as the movie's attempt at photorealistic visual effects of its alien creatures appear on screen. There's a good reason these animated films that keep being remade were animated in the first place, and in the case of this movie's source material, it's immediately evident that to try to make that film be "realistic" in any way is a fool's errand.

The original acted in the vein of an old-fashioned cartoon, in which much of the comedy and charm was in how strange, wacky, and unrealistic its characters could appear and behave. To try to make Stitch act as a physical entity that can interact with real people and real things is, in some significant way, to undermine the possibilities of that character. This Stitch certainly looks as if you could take it home (Surely, that's part of the merchandising appeal of making the movie in the first place, since any kid probably can beg for a stuffed or maybe even moving one in the toy aisle). Isn't this alien, though, more fun, not only as a cute and fluffy little thing, but also as an agent of chaos, causing destruction and being rude?

Poor little Stitch—or Experiment 626, as the creature is known before it's adopted by the other title character—feels neutered in this version. Surely, the filmmakers make the blue guy cute and cuddly, but where is that edge of its original purpose, having been designed to destroy entire civilizations, or, for that matter, the loneliness of Stitch's growing realization that it is the only one of its kind, designed in a lab and without anyone to call its family?

It would be easy to point out how much the screenplay by Chris Kekaniokalani Bright and Mike Van Waes has transformed Stitch into a slightly crude and mischievously unruly but generally well-meaning character. The writers and director Dean Fleischer Camp have their reasons, no matter how misguided and counter to the reason Stitch was so funny in the original film as they may be. On a deeper level, the changes to that character reflect how fundamentally useless a live-action version of this story is.

This one needs animation—plain and simple. Without it, we're just watching a bland visual effect of a character be kind of silly and adorable against the backdrops of Hawaii and in the middle of a human story that's, even more strangely, never as convincing or affecting as its animated predecessor, either. The whole affair feels at odds with itself, because it inherently cannot be as goofy as its inspiration, no matter how hard it tries, and, without that, the story's more grounded themes about family end up feeling fake, too.

For the most part, the plot remains exactly the same, which makes the entire endeavor even more confounding, as well as clunky, given the haphazard way the narrative has been expanded and reconfigured. Stitch (voiced again by Chris Sanders, a co-director of the animated film) escapes captivity after an intergalactic council discovers its existence and crash-lands on Earth. There, he's eventually adopted, pretending to be a most unusual dog, by Lilo (Maia Kealoha), an orphan being raised by her older sister Nani (Sydney Agudong).

That trio of characters should be the heart of this story, but the filmmakers seem to assume that, since most of the audience is already aware of exactly how this tale will play out, there's no reason to actually develop any of that this time. The remake skips a lot of opportunities for gags, too, or maybe, it only feels that way, since a real-looking Stitch, actual humans, and real backgrounds limit the possible shenanigans into which the little guy can get. That's even more noticeable with Jumba (Zach Galifianakis) and Pleakley (Billy Magnussen), the aliens trying to capture Stitch, who end up spending most of the movie in boring, old human form.

The very existence of Lilo & Stitch defeats the purpose of its animated originator, which is something that couldn't be said of other live-action remakes of Disney's animated features. It turns something full of imagination and heart into a lifeless, unconvincing copy.

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