Review: ‘Lilo and Stitch’ an adorable alien remake with no new tricks

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It’s easy to eye yet another Disney IP remake and wonder: Why are we doing this again? The latest is a hybrid live-action retelling of 2002’s “Lilo & Stitch,” about a lovably unruly Native Hawaiian girl and the alien “dog” that crash-lands in her life. Give it this: It makes the eponymous creature of cuddly mass destruction more adorable than ever, with a fresh coat of CG so photorealistic, you’ll itch to reach out and scritch his fuzzy blue fur.

Better yet, an abundance of vitality flows from 8-year-old discovery Maia Kealoha, who makes her acting debut playing the young Lilo with an irresistibly rambunctious charm. In a frantically paced remake so uninterested in veering from the blueprint that it apes the original right down to dialogue, camera moves and the exact same needle drops, it’s the expressive Kealoha, with her ear-piercing shrieks of delight, and Sydney Elizebeth Agudong, excellent as her older sister Nani, who make an argument for this watered-down movie to exist.

Director Dean Fleischer Camp, who milked genuine emotion from an unlikely protagonist in 2021’s “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On,” opens the film by speeding through a shot-for-shot reenactment of the original prologue. On a distant planet in a galaxy far, far away (no, not that one), a pint-size kaiju genetically engineered for mayhem and dubbed “Experiment 626” escapes from the authorities who have declared him a dangerous abomination. Resembling a blue koala with floppy ears, six arms and sharp teeth, the wily renegade steals a ship and crash-lands on Oahu, where he poses as a pup to evade capture and is adopted by lonely 6-year-old Lilo Pelekai, who renames her new “pet” Stitch (voiced by creator Chris Sanders).

Optimistic but prone to emotional outbursts, Lilo lives with Nani, a former competitive surfer who deferred her college dreams after their parents’ death. While Nani tries her best to play guardian with the help of kindly neighbor Tūtū (Amy Hill, who voiced Mrs. Hasagawa in the original) and Tūtū’s sweet grandson David (Kaipo Dudoit), she’s drowning under a mountain of bills and household chores when social worker Mrs. Kekoa (Tia Carrere, the voice of Nani in the 2002 film) suggests that state care might be a better option for the vulnerable Lilo.

But “ohana” means family, and that Hawaiian term turned marketing refrain still rules the “Lilo & Stitch” universe, while the subtle critiques of colonialism, tourism and colorism that gave the 2002 animated film uncommon real-world bite and depth for a Disney film are less discernible here. And although composer Dan Romer’s playful score adds jaunty rhythms and choral textures to island-spanning montages as the tiny terrors bond over hula and Elvis Presley, the warmly lit, stripped-down world of the film (shot on Oahu by cinematographer Nigel Bluck) feels flatter and sparser than Disney’s other live-action outings.

The stakes escalate when Stitch’s creator, Dr. Jumba Jookiba (an oddly restrained Zach Galifianakis), and the noodly Agent Pleakley (a gloriously goofy Billy Magnussen) are sent by the imperious Grand Councilwoman (Hannah Waddingham) to bumble after the fugitive ET. CIA Agent Cobra Bubbles (Courtney Vance) also starts nosing around, albeit with a lack of mystique that leaves a delightfully inscrutable character from the original film a bit adrift. “Lilo & Stitch” might be the first Disney kids’ movie to make lack of access to health care a cursory plot point, just one example of how the script, by Chris Kekaniokalani Bright and Mike Van Waes, favors convenience over imagination. (In another, Jumba and Pleakley hide their muculent alien bodies with human-presenting hologram technology, ostensibly also saving on the VFX budget.)

It’s a nice touch, though, to see 2002’s “Lilo & Stitch” voice actors return in this reimagining, including Jason Scott Lee, the original voice of David, who appears as the manager of a resort luau where Lilo and Stitch’s mischief-making jeopardizes Nani’s job for the umpteenth time. Despite a snoozer of a pat ending that strains to bring its themes full circle, the live-action iteration at least proves that the franchise, with its notion of ohana and several films, spin-off series and countless plushies sold to date, hasn’t lost all its heft – just its original spark.

RATING: **1/2 OUT OF FOUR