Movie Review: Disney's "Lilo & Stitch" Live-Action Remake Still Isn't as Charming as the Original
This coming weekend will see the release of Disney’s new live-action remake of its 2002 animated feature Lilo & Stitch, and below are my thoughts on this latest reimagining from the House of Mouse.
Lilo & Stitch (2025) begins with a fully CGI-animated sequence introducing the latter of the title characters, with Stitch’s real-life creator Chris Sanders (The Wild Robot) returning to voice the fan-favorite alien menace also known as Experiment 626. We also meet Stitch’s in-universe also-alien creator Jumba (The Hangover’s Zach Galifianakis) his boss the Grand Councilwoman (Ted Lasso’s Hannah Waddingham) and an overeager “Earth expert" named Pleakley (Billy Magnussen from Game Night). Then, after 626 is launched toward Earth as enforcement of his exile, there’s a jarring cut to live-action Hawaii and the introduction of Lilo (young newcomer Maia Kealoha).
Lilo lives with her sister-turned-adoptive-mother Nani (Sydney Agudong from the TV series On My Block) as they struggle to get by in the wake of their parents’ death. Conflict arises when Lilo gets in trouble at class, and a social-services agent named Mrs. Kekoa (Wayne’s World star Tia Carrere– who voiced Nani in 2002’s Lilo & Stitch) warns Nani that her little sister might be taken away and placed in foster care if things don’t shape up. That’s when even more chaos is introduced into the situation by the arrival of Stitch, who is initially mistaken for a blue-furred dog and adopted by Lilo at the encouragement of her kindly neighbor Tutu (The Cat In the Hat’s Amy Hill, also returning from the animated version).
There are some fun– and touching– scenes of Lilo and Stitch learning how to get along with each other and then bond over their mutual status as troublemaking outcasts, but a lot of the humor in the movie fell flat for me, with the exception of Jumbo and Pleakley’s buffoonery. Galifianakis and Magnussen make for a winning pair of goofball villains, but they’re a standout highlight in a movie that by and large feels like an inferior facsimile of the far-more-charming original that was so fresh and breezy when it was released theatrically 23 years ago. Like Robert Zemeckis’s Pinocchio before it, this iteration of Lilo & Stitch mostly comes across like it was once destined for the Disney+ streaming service– as it was reportedly originally intended.
Also along for the ride are The Hunt for Red October’s Courtney B. Vance as CIA agent Cobra Bubbles and My Partner’s Kaipo Dudoit as Tutu’s surfer-dude grandson David, who has a crush on Nani, but neither of these characters are terribly memorable and their actors’ performances feel phoned in. Obviously the heart of this story is the relationship between the leads, which works well enough that I believe families with young children will find the movie appealing, but it would have made for a better overall picture if the “ohana" clicked as a whole instead of feeling like a bunch of actors cast for how much they resembled their cartoon counterparts. Ultimately this new Lilo & Stitch just didn’t do it for me as an adult, and like so many of these warmed-over remakes, you’re probably going to be better off revisiting the animated original.
Disney’s Lilo & Stitch (2025) opens this Friday, May 23rd, at theaters nationwide.
My grade: 2.5 edible crayons (3.5 if you happen to be under the age of 10).