A wonderful family movie that has everything

Rating: 9/10 (21 September 2012)

My daughter and I love this movie. We have watched it several times! It is one of the best family movies I have ever seen! It has EVERYTHING: humour, adventure, love, cute and funny characters, very good animation, stirring music and dancing, perfect understanding for children, and some deeper truths as well...
I think - unfortunately - that very many children of today can relate to cute little Lilo's situation, as an only child to a single mum. As this is Disney, of course the "single mum" is not her real mother but her big sister, and of course their parents were married but died in an accident. But in reality, I think the movie wants to picture the typical single mum-situation. And also a lot of single mums, who fight to make ends meet and keep the social workers off, who threaten to take their children away - can relate to the situation.
I also like it, that one gets an insight into the culture and life of the local people in Hawaii. It was innovative, I think, to let the main characters have the typical looks of the original inhabitants of the islands. Normally when the hula-hula girls are pictured in movies, they are played by white, Caucasian women.
The part about spaceships and aliens was the least interesting in the movie, according to both my daughter and me. Although they made some funny jokes out of that too, such as the planet Earth being used as a breeding ground for mosquitoes (!), and the social worker who had previously been one of the Men in Black from CIA (if I got that joke right..?)! :-) I warmly recommend this movie for families with children in all ages - and especially mothers and daughters!