NEW YORK (OSV News) – “Lilo & Stitch” (Disney) is the latest yield of a long-term project on the part of the Mouse House to remake some of their more popular animated features of the past into live-action films. The result in this instance is a morally sound but shrill updating of a well-received – and, in some quarters, cherished – 2002 release.
Opening scenes unfold on the distant planet Turo where mad scientist Dr. Jumba Jookiba (Zach Galifianakis) has created Experiment 626 (voice of Chris Sanders), the future Stitch. Despite his diminutive stature and cuddly, though goofy, appearance, Stitch turns out to have an outsized capacity for causing mayhem and destruction.
Consequently, he’s slated for elimination as a failed project. Hijacking a spaceship, Stitch makes good his escape – only to crash land in Hawaii. He’s pursued to Earth by Dr. Jookiba and by Agent Pleakley (Billy Magnussen), a self-proclaimed expert on humans, both of whom have been charged with recapturing the fugitive.
Somewhat at random, Stitch ends up in the animal shelter where Lilo Pelekai (Maia Kealoha), a lonely orphan girl, likes to visit with the caged inmates and feed them candy. She adopts Stitch as a pet and their burgeoning bond transforms her life. Yet the antics of the newcomer only add to the woes of Lilo’s beleaguered older sister and guardian, Nani (Sydney Elizebeth Agudong).
As scripted by Chris Kekaniokalani Bright and Mike Van Waes, director Dean Fleischer Camp’s comedy – like its predecessor, which Sanders helmed – emphasizes “ohana,” an indigenous code of mutual concern and care. Ohana, we learn, applies not only to blood relatives but to members of the wider community.
Celebrating such supportive behavior is certainly in line with Gospel values. Yet invoking ohana also fits in with Hollywood’s long-standing message that substitute clans can be created out of whole cloth by those dissatisfied with – or alienated from – the families into which they were born.
To the degree that this concept subverts God’s overall plan for parents and children, it will rightly strike Christian viewers as potentially pernicious. On the other hand, of course, those who find themselves in profoundly dysfunctional or abusive families may have no alternative but to look elsewhere for healthy relationships.
As for individual morality, the screenplay makes the distinction between bad people and those who simply do bad things now and then. Properly interpreted, this theme may be helpful to kids in clarifying the reality that everyone makes mistakes and that, as a result of original sin, everyone has to struggle to resist vice and cultivate virtue.
Along the same lines, the movie conveys the idea that families need not be perfect to be good. This point might be made the basis for a discussion about the inevitable tensions that arise even in the most loving households, about human frailty and the corollary need for forbearance toward others as well as about the value of forgiveness.
While “Lilo & Stitch” thus stands on a fairly firm ethical foundation, some of its aesthetic details are shakier. Easily entertained youngsters may find Stitch’s gift for wreaking havoc – as well as Dr. Jookiba and Agent Pleakley’s bumbling ways – amusing; more demanding moviegoers, not so much.
Lilo, moreover, tends to express her every emotion, from delight to anger and alarm, by giving vent to a screech. This proves taxing so that grown-ups who wind up at the Cineplex either inspired by nostalgia for the original or in the role of companion to members of the targeted demographic may be left longing for a dose of aspirin.
The film contains cartoonish violence, characters in peril as well as fleeting scatological and gross-out humor. The OSV News classification is A-II – adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association rating is PG – parental guidance suggested. Some material may be inappropriate for children.