‘Lilo & Stitch’ Review: ‘Ohana’ Means Familiar in a Disney Live-Action Redo That Barely Strays From Its Source

When “Lilo & Stitch” opened in 2002, the Disney marketing department cheekily treated its title character — a shape-shifting alien bioweapon — as the studio’s redheaded stepchild. Conceived by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, the irreverent original story wasn’t based on a beloved classic like “Pinocchio” or “Aladdin,” and offered nothing even remotely resembling a princess: just a lonely Hawaiian orphan and the unruly addition to her family. Aptly enough, the movie’s teaser poster featured a dozen iconic Disney characters recoiling in horror at the disruptive newcomer.

To say that the big-eared blue critter eventually found its place would be an understatement. Two decades on, Stitch ranks among Disney’s most ubiquitous characters — especially from a merchandising perspective, as that mischievous mug of his can be seen on backpacks, plush toys, T-shirts and, well, mugs of all sizes. So it was only a matter of time before the studio’s insatiable remake machine got around to translating “Lilo & Stitch” to “live action,” which director Dean Fleischer Camp (“Marcel the Shell With Shoes On”) has done with a sensibility so faithful it borders on tame.

Somehow, “Lilo & Stitch” has lost its unpredictable sense of anarchy in the retelling. For all intents and purposes, it could be a Hawaii-set sitcom, displaying less in common with such opulent Disney reimaginings as “Beauty and the Beast” and “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” than it does the unabashedly hokey live-action movies the studio once churned out (e.g., “The Shaggy Dog” and “That Darn Cat!”).

Except, where this troublemaker is concerned, Stitch remains animated, while practically all the other characters are played by real people — including Zach Galifianakis and Billy Magnussen, in a pair of great physical comedy performances, as two bumbling aliens in human disguise. Here, I can’t help feeling nostalgic for old-school hybrids like “Mary Poppins” and “Pete’s Dragon,” in which colorful 2D cartoon elements appeared alongside living, breathing actors.

Although designed with photorealism in mind, today’s computer-generated co-stars seldom look convincing, resulting in that neither-fish-nor-fowl effect seen in 2023’s “The Little Mermaid,” where the sidekicks that had made the animated film so endearing were all replaced with slightly repellent CG stand-ins. You wouldn’t necessarily think of it, but when the decision is made to abandon the bubbly, stylized look of Sanders’ signature cartoon style in favor of the “real world,” there are a whole bunch of philosophical questions to consider. Like, how should Stitch look exactly?

So much depends on striking the right balance of adorable and unhinged. It had never occurred to me that this Elvis-loving alien might be quite so furry, for example. In the original, Stitch had a tuft of hair up top, but otherwise came across fairly sleek, as if his coat might have a consistency somewhere between that of a seal and a Chihuahua. Fleischer Camp evidently imagines Stitch as being closer to a koala, which makes sense, I suppose — the species was a direct inspiration on Sanders’ character design — though it somehow seems off to see him looking quite so cuddly.

Will audiences go for it? What “Lilo & Stitch” has in its favor is the emotionally solid blueprint provided by Sanders and DeBlois’ screenplay, which brings everything back to family, updated (and slightly expanded) here by Chris Kekaniokalani Bright and Mike Van Waes. Among the added details in this 23-minute-longer version is a fun surfing sequence and slightly more for the social worker (played by Tia Carrere) to do. The latter dilutes the risk that Lilo could be separated from her older sister, Nani (Sydney Agudong).

With more slapstick than peril, the whole endeavor skews young — to roughly the age of Maia Kealoha, the cutesy 6-year-old child actor who plays Lilo. She’s an unfortunate case of miscasting, alas, since a character who should be nearly as frenetic as Stitch is embodied by a Little Miss Perfect type instead. In Kealoha’s hands, Lilo seems more likely to curtsy than she is to set fire to the restaurant where her older sister, Nani (Sydney Agudong), works.

One of the key plot points involves the human characters — all but UFO-savvy FBI agent Cobra Bubbles (Courtney B. Vance) — mistaking Stitch for a highly exotic dog, which allows Lilo to adopt him from the local animal shelter. The way the story is told, much of the comedy depends on audiences being privy to the weird creature’s extraterrestrial backstory, while Lilo and the other human characters have no idea of Stitch’s full destructive potential.

Meanwhile, his mad-scientist creator, Jumba (Galifianakis), and “Ee-arth” expert Pleakley (Billy Magnussen) are in hot pursuit, looking for the right moment to snag Stitch and take him back to their leader, the Grand Councilwoman (Hannah Waddingham). I was a lot more satisfied with the CG look of all these alien characters — plus a bright pink crew member who looks like an anthropomorphic axolotl — than I was with Stitch, who simply doesn’t feel cartoony enough.

When Warner Bros. inevitably gets around to making a CG Looney Tunes movie, I hope it sticks to those signature expressions and poses, instead of trying to make Bugs Bunny and the Tasmanian Devil look like real mammals, the way Fleischer Camp treats Stitch. Anyone who’s ever had a pet has spent countless hours staring into the animal’s beady eyes, scrutinizing every micro-twitch and squint in hopes of interpreting what the creature might be thinking. “Lilo & Stitch” embraces that kind of subtlety, rather than giving audiences the broad, exaggerated expressions that make animation so satisfying.

That’s one reason I don’t think these live-action cover versions will have much of a shelf life: They cash in on a trend where visual effects make it possible to see how imaginative hand-drawn visions might look in “reality,” but offer few of the charms inherent in the original medium. (Next month, DreamWorks will experiment with another Sanders-DeBlois property, “How to Train Your Dragon,” which means Shrek can’t be far down the pipeline.)

“Lilo & Stitch” isn’t an embarrassment. Few of these Disney remakes are, since they’re made with far too much care. But instead of deepening our love for the originals, they tend to chip away at it, undermining the magic on which Walt founded the company.