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| Genre: | Animation - Family |
| Year: | 2002 |
| Rating: | PG |
| Length: | 1h 25mins |
| Cast: | Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders, Chris Sanders, Daveigh Chase |
Disney has never before unleashed an animated character like the helium-voiced Stitch, which makes Lilo & Stitch the most refreshingly out-of-this-world film from the House of Mouse in quite a while. Filled with anarchic humor and stuffed to the pelvis with Elvis Presley songs, it tells the heartwarming story of an extraterrestrial science experiment gone awry, leaving chaos and destruction in its wake. All this occurs in Hawaii, to boot, where Stitch proves to be the answer to one lonely girl's prayers. Lilo, a young girl, lives with her loving but overwhelmed older sister, Nani (voiced by Tia Carrere). Lonely Lilo is something of an outcast, with a passion for the King and a penchant for mischief. "Send me the nicest angel you have," she wishes upon a star. What she gets is Stitch, a.k.a. Experiment 626, who escapes his creators and crash-lands on our planet. His maker, Jumba (David Odgen Stiers), and a supposed Earth expert, Pleakley (Kevin McDonald of Kids in the Hall), are dispatched to retrieve him. But Lilo finds him first in a dog pound and adopts him. Her ill-fated attempts to tame the creature come at a time when a menacing social worker (Ving Rhames) gives Nani only three days to shape up the family's untidy life or lose custody of Lilo. What "Hakuna Matata" was to The Lion King, "ohana" is to Lilo & Stitch. It means "family," and to Nani and Lilo, that means "nobody gets left behind or forgotten." As much as it subverts the time-honored Disney formula, Lilo & Stitch is refreshingly old school. For the first time since Dumbo, the animators used watercolors for the backgrounds. One of the most enjoyable Disney animated features in recent years, it rivals Aladdin, Hercules, and the surprise hit The Emperor's New Groove for sheer fun. The DVD edition will have you all shook up with music videos of Elvis classics (performed by the A*Teens and Wynonna), deleted scenes, and those hilarious commercials in which Stitch wreaks havoc on such Disney icons as Ariel and Belle and the Beast. Donald Liebenson
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