With Lilo & Stitch, Disney Gets Its Swagger Back: Review

The 2025 Lilo & Stitch, Disney’s newest live-action adaptation, does what matters most: It stays true to the spirit of the original 2002 movie. Space alien Stitch is still a trouble-making scamp on the run from the Galactic Federation, which wants him imprisoned. He still crash-lands in Hawaii, where two orphaned sisters bring him into their home. Stitch still causes a whole bunch of trouble for little Lilo (Maia Kealoha) and struggling Nani (Sydney Agudong), but they still stand up for him when other aliens track him down. Ohana still means family, and that no one gets left behind, or forgotten.

A remake that doesn’t stray too far from what worked about the original is not always a guarantee for this particular subgenre of entertainment. Yet director Dean Fleischer Camp and writers Chris Kekaniokalani Bright and Mike Van Waes came to this story with clear affection for what Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois did in 2002, preserving its heart-warming qualities while avoiding too much of that cookie-cutter feel.

There are numerous changes from the animated to the live-action movie that make practical sense on multiple levels: For example, Billy Magnussen and Zach Galifianakis play the two aliens hunting for “Experiment 626” on Earth, and while initially they just voice the CGI creations, it turns out the aliens have devices that allow them to take human form for a good chunk of their screen time. Real-life Galifianakis on the set surely isn’t cheap, but he’s probably less expensive than the dozens of animators needed to make the alien doctor come to life in his “natural” form. And Magnussen’s wonderfully expressive face communicates “I’m an alien who’s happy to be here!” more effectively than any computer can.

There are also changes where the reasoning feels a little harder to suss out, such as the addition of a portal gun (yes, pretty much exactly like the one from the video game Portal) to spice up the action. In the case of the portal gun, at least, the motivation was probably as simple as “portals are very cool,” and this writer happens to agree with that sentiment, so why not.

All of those changes contribute to a movie that’s confident in its themes, and the inherent cuteness of the story it’s telling audiences for the second time. Lilo & Stitch isn’t the first live-action adaptation Disney’s released this year, and by comparison, Snow White technically features more originality and innovation on the previous version. But most of the “innovative” ideas Snow White added were silly, unnecessary, or horrifying.

Meanwhile, Lilo & Stitch is only occasionally one of those things, and it’s silly in the good way, sharing an appreciation for fart and booger jokes with the original. One always wants to champion a film that takes creative chances over a movie that is more straightforward in its approach to the assignment. But also… a bad movie is a bad movie.

The original Lilo & Stitch isn’t often celebrated as one of Disney’s greatest, but it’s an easy movie to love, if you have an appreciation for movies that somehow combine sci-fi, surfing, the music of Elvis, and a tear-jerking family dynamic. It’s a movie that speaks to the oddballs, those who cherish found family, those who want to believe it’s possible to heal from unimaginable loss. It also happens to be a movie where a six-legged space alien just absorbs two of his legs into his body so he can better impersonate a dog.

(That part’s super-weird, the more you think about it. Like, those two legs just disappear! Like he never needed them in the first place! And then they’re just… inside him? Forever? There are a lot of questions to be asked about Stitch’s physiology, really. Something for the inevitable prequel to explore.)

Live-action remakes sometimes feel like an exercise in proving modern-day cinema’s technological ability to mimic the joys of animation. Yet the best ones have some element that justifies the decision to create the remake in the first place; some fresh spin that might not necessarily be an improvement, but at least makes you reconsider the original text. In the case of Lilo & Stitch, it has nothing to do with the aliens involved: It’s the humans.

As adorable as the animated Lilo was, there remains a real spark to seeing two relatable actors connect with each other on screen. Camp really handles his young stars well, with Maia Kealoha feeling very much like a little kid without losing the distinctive qualities of the character to “aw, shucks!” cuteness. (To be clear, she is very cute.) Kealoha and Sydney Agudong have a real sisterly bond on screen, while Nani’s own personal journey gets deeper development: Not only do we get more information about her character prior to the death of her and Lilo’s parents, but it culminates in an ending that has a new kind of emotional heft to it.

It remains a bit ridiculous to call something a live-action movie when the opening 10 minutes or so feature pretty much zero live-action elements, and one of the titular stars is largely rendered in CGI. Yet there’s something about the Stitch character design that translates effectively to the “live-action” arena — while he doesn’t have quite so cartoony a look in this movie, he’s still so eloquent on a physical level that you’re not struggling to discern what emotion he might be feeling. (The ears in particular communicate a lot, especially when they drape down his back.)

Compared to the blank faces of the lions in Jon Favreau’s The Lion King, the CGI Stitch is a massive improvement. It also helps that Camp and the effects team really do integrate him seamlessly, without ever crossing over into the uncanny valley. The result is that Stitch remains as he’s always been: A dangerous scamp who becomes easy to love, by the end.

While the live-action version may never fully replace the original in the hearts of its fans, this new Lilo & Stitch manages to capture the real emotion embedded in this story, while also nailing all the fun that comes from an agent of chaos discovering he has a heart. Only some disjointed plotting and an occasionally clunky third act keep it from being the best Disney live-action adaptation yet. Otherwise, it’s a solid cover of a beloved song, one still capable of bringing a tear to the eye.

Lilo & Stitch invade movie theaters on Friday, May 23rd. Check out the trailer below.