Disney is back on track!

Rating: 10/10 (11 November 2002)

Films by the Walt Disney Company have been in danger of becoming stale recently - and although there have been valiant attempts to stray from the well-worn fairy tale musical (such as the recent Atlantis: The Lost Empire, a Jules Verne homage of nineteenth century explorers attempting to find the fable underwater city, strangely enough for a Disney film, without song), it has only been the CGI offerings of Pixar that has revitalized Disney with such modern classics as Toy Story and Monsters Inc. But how was Disney to reenergize itself with its traditional cel animation? The answer lay in the story of a small Hawaiian girl called Lilo, and her pet "dog" Stitch. Lilo is not a traditional Disney heroine. Unlike Belle from Beauty and the Beast and Ariel from The Little Mermaid, Lilo is not the perfect girl who puts everybody before herself. She is a deeply troubled girl who cannot come to terms with the death of her parents in a car accident. She deliberately ostracizes herself from her peers, and even goes out of her way to antagonize them. She also frequently clashes with her sister Nonnie, who is trying to hold the remnants of their family together even though she is no more than a child herself. Nonnie is also not perfect. Lilo annoys her, and even though there is a desperate love between them it is their differences and inability to grieve properly that brings them to the attention of the child welfare authorities. Nonnie is given a short period of time in which to prove herself fit to be Lilo's guardian, and to try and cheer her little sister up she decides to adopt a family dog. Enter Stitch - the product of an alien genetic experiment who has escaped from his homeworld, and is followed by an intergalactic united nations to attempt to bring him back. Stitch will prove to be a kindred spirit to Lilo, as he is also on a path of self-destruction. He has been programmed to destroy everything that gets in his way, but under Lilo's guidance and away from the influence of his creators he becomes open to the Hawaiian concept of "okana": family. Nonnie and Lilo operate by the maxim that in a family nobody gets left behind. And that grows to include Stitch as his secret is revealed, but he proves his worth in a family that is trying to piece itself together. The film does lag slightly towards the end though, as there is the sewing up of a vast and imaginative plot when the other aliens reveal themselves. But is a slight hiccup in what I feel to be one of the best films of 2002. In the end the characters realize that a family can be composed of many elements, and that members do not have to be of the same bloodline. You can choose your friends, and in that respect they can become your family as well. This is an extremely heartfelt film, but it is not as saccharine as past Disney offerings. There are some true moments of madness to be discovered, and also great poignancy as we watch Nonnie and Lilo trying to rebuild their lives after a tragedy. This is helped by the beauty of the animation itself - Disney has reverted to the traditional watercolouring method that was apparently only last used in the forties. It is a method well suited to bring out the vibrancy of the Hawaiian setting, and the movie rocks along with an Elvis Presley soundtrack which works surprisingly well. All of this adds up to part of the Disney canon which proves that the old Mouse Factory's non-CGI animation department isn't dead yet. There is a breath of fresh air rolling through, and it has been provided by Lilo and Stitch.