Rude, obnoxious, but still Disney

Rating: 7/10 (31 March 2005)

Once while talking to a well regarded children's book illustrator (whose name I can't remember) I was told, children, especially boys like pictures that are ugly. Cute when out a long time ago.
Now Disney is the home of cute. So you can imagine the sales pitch of Lilo & Stitch to the suits at Disney.
"Well the main character Lilo is a thoroughly obnoxious and disturbingly weird child, who is looked after by her sister who has her own problems. Which of course makes them the perfect host family for a banned genetic experiment (626) who is programmed to crush, kill destroy and is on the run from the alien council." Imagine the slow steady puffing of fat cigars and blank stares.
"Did I mention that Ohana means family....yeah it is all about family..." I think the result was Disneyfied (I want that to become a word in the dictionary one day, meaning to made family orientated and cute) because 626 (aka stitch) is too cute for the scripted response of horror when people meet Stitch.
Certainly this movie breaks the core Disney formula while also keeping to it and in many ways it has been a pity that Disney has not keep up this approach leaving other studios to make things like Shrek (an obnoxious ogre whose bad habits are popular amongst modern children).
Lilo & Stitch is a lot of fun to watch, but maybe a little too simple for adults to really get into it. It has the usual bad blend of 3D and 2D animation that Disney took a long time to overcome (Mulan was probably the first time they got it right.) I do wonder if anyone involved in this movie actually went to Hawaii?