Lilo & Stitch

Grade: B-

I’ve found my Kryptonite. End a movie with my favorite Elvis Presley song (“Burning Love”), and I’ll give it a recommending review. It’s happened 100% of the time so far, including The Boogeyman and Zombieland: Double Tap. The latter had a mean cover performed by Woody Harrelson. Had it been tacked on to the end of Gladiator II, Blonde, or Not Another Church Movie, all may have been forgiven. Lilo & Stitch ends with a rousing rendition from Nyjah Music and Zyah Rhythm. I like it better than the version that ends the original film.

I actually have never seen L&S (2002). I just listened to its “Burning Love” online a minute ago. The 2025 live action remake is directed by Dean Fleischer Camp (Marcel the Shell with Shoes On). It was touch-and-go, but he manages to pull it off by the end. If you’re a crazy person who has never seen it, or it’s been 23 years, I’ll recap. A short, blue alien creature has escaped his planet of origin. He crashes onto a Hawaiian island on Earth, where Lilo (a young girl being raised by her older sister, due to a family tragedy) finds him hiding out in the puppy pound, and adopts him. She names him Stitch.

There’s no shortage of entertainment from Stitch. He steals the show. I audibly laughed a few times, whether it be from his broken English, bodily noises, or dog impersonations. I sometimes had trouble understanding Maia Kealoha as the human title character – but there’s no problem in the adorability department, even if there is one in the diction department. Tia Carrere (who – 33 years ago – played bass, sang “Ballroom Blitz,” and made Wayne and Garth go SCHWING!) is in this. Nice to see her again. Courtney B. Vance and Zach Galifianakis seem to be having fun.

I spent most of the film thinking about how the original, as a cartoon, was probably more enchanting, and how so much – if not everything – lands better in the 2002 movie. I couldn’t get past the elements that have too much realness when viewed in live action, as opposed to animation. Here, when a fire gets started on a dinner table at the resort, it’s a real fire, not a cartoon fire. In the climactic fight on an airplane with a big gaping hole, I was preoccupied with wondering why the wind resistance didn’t immediately suck everyone out. I’d go with the flow more easily if it was a cartoon. However, by the end, the charming, infectious story is powerful enough to transcend a possibly inferior, hollow remake – and it’s making me barely recommend the movie at the last minute. The magic of Disney is alive and well, or maybe it was the King.

Grade: B-