Really Late Movie Review: Lilo & Stitch

Date: 20 April 2019

If you have ever watched my streams, you know I like to do silly voices and bad accents. One of my favorites, is a high, squeaky voice. I originally based it off of Smeagol from the Lord of Rings movies but many of my viewers, when they first hear it immediately think of Stitch from Lilo and Stitch. They are shocked when I tell them that I’ve never seen the movie … until now!

I had some time this afternoon and decided that I see Lilo & Stitch. After all, if people are going to keep saying that sound like Stitch, I should see what they’re talking about. The tl;dr is that it’s a fun movie but it takes a little longer to get moving than most Disney movies.

It’s hard to like Stitch for the first two thirds of the movie. He was designed to be an agent of destruction. And he is. Unfortunately, what he destroys is the small family of Lilo and her big sister Nani.

I want to divert for a moment. A lot of people praise Frozen because it has a main character, in Elsa, who is a strong woman who doesn’t need a man in her life. Rightly, so, I suppose. Where they are wrong is when they try to say that it’s the first Disney movie like that. It does a horrible disservice to Nani Lilo & Stitch.

Nani is a young woman who is doing everything she can to keep her little family together after her parents died. Like many single parents, she’s struggling. When Social Services sends an agent to evaluate the household and Lilo’s, Nani tries to spin things but it’s obvious that she’s struggling. That’s when Stitch shows up and things go from bad to worse.

Everything works out, of course, when Stitch learns the importance of family and how much Lilo means to him. That’s a message that’s not seen as often in movies today. Frozen showed that some with Anna’s determination to help Elsa. It would be easier, in many ways, for Nani to give up and let the state take Lilo. She didn’t plan to be a parent but she took up the role because she loves her sister that much.

For Stitch, the importance of family allows him to find a purpose more important than his built-in impulse for destruction. It’s at that point that I really began to like Stitch. It’s hard not to like a character with that much drive and desire to save his family. He’s also cute and fluffy. 😄

My favorite sequence was Stitch dropping in on Captain Gantu with a hearty “Aloha!” while trying to save Lilo. It’s fun and it shows just how much Stitch has absorbed from his adopted family.

In the end, I enjoyed Lilo & Stitch. It’s not my favorite Disney movie but it’s cute and enjoyable. If you, like me, have waited 17 years to see Lilo & Stitch, it might be time to change that.