'Lilo and Stitch' Review: The Original Remains Pretty, Pretty Good

Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois made their directorial debut with a charming, original animated film.

Now Streaming: Springing from the mind of animator Chris Sanders in 1985, Stitch is roughly analogous to a baby from outer space.

In Lilo & Stitch, released in 2002, co-writers and co-directors Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois introduce a diminutive monster on another planet, so scary and frightening to its inhabitants that it's sent into exile, with the hope that it will perish when it overcomes its captors and lands on a planet that is covered (nearly) entirely with water, where the creature has no hope of survival. 

Of course, the alien crash-lands on a tiny island, compelling Grand Councilwoman (Zoe Caldwell) to send the creature's creator, mad scientist Jumpa (David Ogden Stiers) to retrieve it, accompanied by the meek, ill-suited, and entirely disposable Pleakley (Kevin McDonald). 

On the island where the creature lands, young Lilo (Daveigh Chase) lives with her older sister Nani (Tia Carrere), who is struggling to care for Lilo as her legal guardian. The sisters are grieving the death of their beloved parents. Lilo is acting out, aggressively, while Nani threatens to kill her -- not really -- as she is overwhelmed by a full-time job and a young girl who is out of control. 

On a visit to an animal shelter, Lilo encounters the creature and instantly falls in love with the batty little thing, renaming it Stitch. The collision between Lilo and Stitch is a marriage of opportunity: Lilo needs a best friend and companion, and Stitch needs somewhere to hide out from Jumpa and Pleakley. 

Delightful and charming, the story unfolds along traditional narrative lines, and is told in an unhurried yet steady pace. The characters are enjoyable, the relationships are relatable, and the jokes are funny. The 2D animation looks gorgeous, and holds up well after more than 20 years, which is true of the film as a whole, which I watched last week. 

It was the second of three films made primarily at Disney's animation studio in Florida -- the first was Mulan (1998), the third was Brother Bear (2003) -- the film earned more than $273 million worldwide (on a reported $80 million budget), earned an Academy Award nomination, and spawned three movie sequels and three spin-off series, which are all streaming on Disney Plus. 

The film holds up well as family entertainment that is sufficiently charming to entertain adults too, single or otherwise, more so than the new live-action version, which chugs along gamely but falls short of the original's charm. If the advertising for the new film has caught your attention, however, now is a good time to revisit the original. [Disney Plus]