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Ohana Means Nothing: The Barren Virtues and Missing Heart of a Vacuous Lilo & Stitch

Lilo & Stitch holds a special place in the heart for a lot of Disney fans around my age. Likely a little too young to catch the classics of the Disney Renaissance like Beauty and the Beast or The Lion King on initial release, this story of the relationship between a manic alien experiment and a troublemaker of a Hawaiian girl, was the first (and really only) great Disney movie to come to theatres and hit at a formative age -none of the other films they released in the 2000s come anywhere close. Disney themselves knew this when they put this latest horrendous retread into production, perhaps figuring they had one last shot through their live-action remake machine to really capitalize on the nostalgia of my generation, and assessing (very accurately it appears) that we are still very easily manipulated by such things. As a result, the 2025 Lilo & Stitch is everything the animated movie was not -blisteringly derivative where that one was starkly original, hollow and colourless where that film had been spontaneous and soulful, culturally artificial rather than culturally rich, and simple where there was once emotional complexity. In a way, I have to hand it to Disney -though none of their remakes have been any good at all, it’s been several years since they have produced one that is this bad.
It is directed by Dean Fleischer Camp of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, though little of that film’s cute earnestness is tangible here. Indeed much of the first two acts simply replay the original animated film, several times down to the shot composition and staging. And as in the other occasions where Disney has taken this approach, it looks very dull and lifeless. There is no sense of energy to most of the film’s visual choices, and even where things are more distinct -like in the layout of the Pelekai home, it just comes off as barren or dreary -which makes sense given the financial situation of Nani, played here by Sydney Elizabeth Agudong, but was allowed to have some colour and texture in cartoon form.
Some things in the presentation had to be adjusted for the sake of the more ‘realistic’ format -chiefly the fact that aliens Jumba (Zach Galifianakis) -the mad scientist who created Stitch, and Pleakley (Billy Magnussen) -a bureaucrat and Earth expert deputized to him, cannot simply put on human clothes as plausible disguises among humans. For most of the film the two wear human cloaking devices, saving the film from having to animate a pair of alien designs that look awful (and in the case of Pleakley -horrifying) in CGI, though also robbing the film -likely with intent- of the queer-coding that accompanied the disguises they wore in the original. This choice very much epitomizes why the story really requires animation to work -that barrier of tangibility makes for a way easier suspension of disbelief when it comes to the story’s more outrageous elements. Stitch himself is another example of this. In addition to being yet another visual effect that doesn’t fully register with the reality around it, the notion that anybody buys for a second this blue vaguely koala-looking creature is a dog is a pretty ludicrous supposition.
Stitch’s distinct voice is once again provided by Chris Sanders, director of the original film, delivering with less gusto many of the same lines from twenty-three years ago. Stitch is given a couple more set-pieces this time around, including a wedding he crashes, remaining the film’s primary focal point. But his new family, which many fans of the original film would agree was its true heart, are greatly disserviced by the remake’s script, which brushes them in the broad strokes of their storylines from the original film and with ample repeated dialogue, but not actually understanding much at all what made Nani and Lilo so compelling as characters in the first place. The performances are a part of it. Formerly, Lilo really stood out from the Disney canon for being an unusually authentic child character -it is the crux of what made her so endearing. There was an exceptional degree of real emotional honesty in Daveigh Chase’s vocal performance and the minutiae in how she was animated; while this actress, Maia Kealoha, though cute, comes across mostly as just a kid reciting the lines of their favourite Disney film.
What doesn't help is this film's omission of her emotional conflict in the one area where the film tries to be different -albeit different purely in the sense of streamlining a last act that was more than a touch convoluted in the original to be honest. But there is never any tension between Lilo and Stitch -all the fun bits of their relationship come back in much reduced terms, but none of the more valuable beats of simmering contention. Lilo never seems to place limits on Stitch's mayhem, and crucially, that foundation of family in her life -particularly the trauma of the loss of her parents- is all but absent in her virtues and motivations. The fact is, though Stitch was always the more prominently spotlighted character, that original film was just as much about Lilo. And this movie patently is not.
The family theme that has long given Lilo & Stitch its most famous line hardly registers as a consequence. The 'Ohana means family' beat, which has already seen all of its initial sincerity scrubbed away via Disney's need to hyper-exploit everything, feels especially meaningless in this context. Through no fault of the actors it can't be stated with legitimate conviction, and Stitch -not having the same expressive range as his cartoon counterpart- seems mostly indifferent to the sentiment. It should come as no surprise that the shallowness with which this theme is articulated extends also to the presentation of Hawaiian culture writ large. Granted, the place is by necessity a fair bit more genuine compared to the original film's purely vacation destination image (a certain degree of the tackiness in that reputation does come through here), but native Hawaiian culture, to which both Lilo and Nani belong, is still illustrated in broad somewhat stereotypical connotations only.
And more to that specific beat around family, one of the greatest points in illustration of this adaptation fundamentally not comprehending its own themes is the presentation of social services as a wholly respectable and virtuous entity, framed to both Nani and the audience as the perfectly responsible option for Lilo’s guardianship. In spite of the apparent commitment to the importance of family and the love demonstrated at least on a surface-level between Nani and Lilo, the idea that Nani should give her sister up to the state is completely antithetical to the movie’s professed ideals. What makes it even more insidious is that the imposing secret agent Cobra Bubbles has been removed from this role (Sterling K. Brown now plays him as a mostly innocuous side character), with instead the more grounded, friendlier face of Tia Carrere, the original voice actress for Nani, representing this institution that aims to separate the family. The fact that alien intervention is presented as the only thing that actually keeps this from happening (rather than, you know, the unbreakable bond between sisters) is quite troubling, and it makes for a very telling contrast between the company that produced the original movie and the company as it is now.
That’s the very point behind everything awful about this movie. The Disney of today is so much more cynical, so much more omnipresent, and so much more creatively bankrupt -even compared to 2002 in the middle of the Michael Eisner years. There’s not a shred of sincerity to this Lilo & Stitch, where sincerity, in spite of the more gimmicky appearances, was what made the original film special. It took Disney into the modern day, into modern lower-class struggle with characters who felt more palpable than almost any others in the Disney canon. And in spite of the wild little blue guy’s antics, it resonated in a very real way. For being “more real” though, this movie couldn’t feel more fake or superficial. It’s got nothing but the easy beats of condescension, like Stitch in the Elvis costume or the record-playing gag, for audiences to clap and throw money at. And it is the most depressing movie of the year for that.

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