Tart and tender offering from Disney

Rating: Null/10 (2 July 2002)

Filled with surprising depth and charm, "Lilo and Stitch" is proof that Disney hasn't entirely lost their touch, and that cel animation is still a very viable medium. The film lacks the grandeur of earlier efforts, and the music is almost purely from Elvis Presley (this is not, by any means, a bad thing), but there's something here that Disney's earlier efforts have been lacking: real heart, and honest characters.
Lilo is a Hawaiian girl with a morbid streak and a lot of pent-up agression. She has good cause: her parents have recently died in a car crash, leaving her in the care of her elder sister Nani. Nani tries her best but she's not quite ready for the adulthood thing, nor is Lilo willing to accept Nani as an authority figure: "I like you better as a sister than as a mother," she confides at one point. Precocious without being cloying, realisticly bratty without being unlikeable, Lilo effortlessly endears herself to the audience.
Unfortunately, Lilo's classmates aren't too thrilled with her, so Nani takes her to find companionship in the form of a dog. Instead, Lilo finds a strange blue koala-like creature whom she christens "Stitch." Stitch is in truth an alien known as Experiement 626. Created for destruction and regarded by the alien council as an abberation of nature, Stitch was condemned to exile but escaped and wound up in our part of the galaxy. Like the title character of last year's "Shrek," Stitch is an unlikely protagonist: importuned by the leader of the galactic council to show some sign of goodness, he responds with language that, had it been translated into English, would probably have knocked the film's rating up a notch. It is his growth through the story that makes Stitch, and the film, so appealing.
While Lilo and Stitch gradually transform each other, the latter is being pursued by his creator and a nervous "Earth expert," while the latter is threatened with being taken from Nani to a foster home. The Social Services director on the girls' case, a massive man oddly (yet somehow appropriately) named Cobra Bubbles, serves as an example of the depth of the characters. In many other films, Bubbles would have been a two-dimentional symbol of an uncaring beaurocracy--here, he displays strong flashes of sympathy and humor. Truth be told, with the possible exception of a humongous, shark-like alien general, there are no real bad guys in "Lilo and Stitch"--only real people fighting because of conflicting desires.
The resolution of "Lilo and Stitch" is rather abrupt, sorting out the conflict with almost buisness-like efficiency. But the journey is an entertaining and moving one, and the characters we share it with, while a little rough around the edges, make the ride a good one.