2002's Lilo and Stitch isn't just good for a post-Renaissance Disney film, it was the best in the canon since Aladdin. Sure, it's derivative. The humour borrows a lot from Futurama and Invader Zim. Stitch himself is basically Gurgi from The Black Cauldron. But there's also a real heart beating in the film in its story about a family that reminded me of The Simpsons in the early years, before it lost its soul. The film also has terrific animation and beautiful art design, only slightly hampered by the early 2000s trend of giving everyone big wrists and ankles (something that lives on for anyone who still plays World of Warcraft). Altogether, in terms of story, visuals, and writing, it's a vastly more coherent and satisfying work than the few films that preceded it.
The story begins in space where we meet a Galactic Federation of various alien species, all apparently having little in common except the fact that they're all adorable. And that includes an illegal product of genetic engineering, a little monster of mass destruction called Experiment 626, later known as Stitch (Chris Sanders).
Stitch escapes custody by stealing a police ship and winds up in Hawaii. There he meets a misfit little girl named Lilo (Daveigh Chase) who lives with her long suffering but very sexy sister Nani (Tia Carrere).
Nani always wears crop tops to emphasise what Fabienne in Pulp Fiction would have called her "pot".
Intriguingly, Lilo's problem is that she's prone to violence and dark thoughts, possibly related to the death of her parents in a car accident. This is certainly a fascinating and appreciably bold direction for a Disney film. Though watching Lilo attack and bite another girl makes it kind of odd Disney felt the scene where Lilo hides in a washing machine had to be censored for Disney+. Surely if you're worried about influencing kids to hide in a washer, you'd be worried about influencing them to committing violent acts? It was a more innocent time, I guess. 9/11 occurred when the film was in production, necessitating a complete alteration of the film's climax which involved the hijacking and crashing of a passenger plane.
But at least we can still enjoy this lovely story about an ultraviolent little alien finding a soul mate in a morbid and fractious little girl who has an endearing fixation on Elvis Presley.
The film uses watercolours for its backgrounds which suits the Hawaiian setting perfectly and provides the film with a consistent and lovely style. The animation is perfect, creatively establishing Stitch as something like a dog and piranha (and, yeah, a lot like Gurgi) and also believably rendering the little girl with as much psychological credibility as the writing. By the end I was hoping Lilo would marry Stitch when they get older but I'm pretty sure that's not what happens in the sequels.
Lilo and Stitch is available on Disney+.
...
This is part of a series of posts I'm writing on the Disney animated canon.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Pinocchio
Fantasia
Dumbo
Bambi
Saludos Amigos
The Three Caballeros
Make Mine Music
Fun and Fancy Free
Melody Time
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
Cinderella
Alice in Wonderland
Peter Pan
Lady and the Tramp
Sleeping Beauty
101 Dalmatians
The Sword in the Stone
The Jungle Book
The Aristocats
Robin Hood
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
The Rescuers
The Fox and the Hound
The Black Cauldron
The Great Mouse Detective
Oliver & Company
The Little Mermaid
The Rescuers Down Under
Beauty and the Beast
Aladdin
The Lion King
Pocahontas
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hercules
Mulan
Tarzan
Fantasia 2000
Dinosaur
The Emperor's New Groove
Atlantis: The Lost Empire
No comments:
Post a Comment