Lilo & Stitch

**Lilo & Stitch** is a 2002 animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The film was written and directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois.

See Also: Lilo & Stitch Franchise

## Plot

On Kaua'i, Hawaii, a young woman named Nani Pelekai is a waitress who struggles to take care of her rambunctious younger sister, Lilo, since their parents died. One day, social worker Cobra Bubbles expresses increasing concern about whether Nani can adequately care for Lilo. Since Lilo's hula classmates have ostracised her, Nani decides to let her adopt a dog. At the animal shelter, Lilo immediately takes a keen interest in a small blue sentient alien named Experiment 626, who is exceptionally strong and intelligent but also tends to cause chaos and got taken in by the shelter when he landed in Hawaii, who is impersonating a dog. Despite Nani's doubts, Lilo renames 626 "Stitch" and shows him around the island. That evening, at the restaurant where Nani works, extraterrestrial mad scientist Dr. Jumba Jookiba, who was recently arrested by the Galactic Federation after making Stitch, and his partner, Agent Wendy Pleakley, the Council's Earth 'expert', unsuccessfully attempt to capture Stitch. The indescribable ensuing chaos is blamed on Stitch, which results in Nani getting fired. The next day, Cobra Bubbles warns her that he will have to place Lilo with a foster family unless she finds another job. However, Stitch's antics while evading his two pursuers persistently ruin Nani's chances of finding work./

Nani's friend David Kawena invites her, Lilo and Stitch to enjoy a day of surfing and beach fun. While Nani, Lilo and Stitch ride a huge wave, Jumba makes one final effort to capture Stitch from underwater, causing Stitch to unintentionally pull Lilo underwater. They survive, but Cobra witnesses this event and tells Nani that, although she means well, Lilo has to be taken away unless Nani finds another job. Seeing how much trouble he has caused, a remorseful Stitch runs off into the night. The next morning, the Galactic Federation's leader, the Grand Councilwoman, fires Jumba and Pleakley from their assignment and gives it to the galaxy's oversized militant captain, Captain Gantu (incidentally freeing Jumba to pursue Stitch using less covert methods). Meanwhile, David informs Nani of a job opportunity, which she excitedly rushes off to pursue. Stitch, hiding in the nearby woods, encounters Jumba, who chases him back to Nani's house. A fight ensues, which blows up the house; Cobra arrives to collect Lilo and take her away.

As Nani and Cobra argue, Lilo runs away into the woods and finds Stitch, who reveals his alien identity before Gantu captures them. Stitch manages to escape from Gantu's ship and is confronted by Nani, who had witnessed their kidnapping. Before he can explain, Jumba and Pleakley capture Stitch themselves. Nani demands that they help her rescue Lilo, but Jumba and Pleakley insist they only came for Stitch. When Nani breaks down, Stitch reminds her about 'ohana, a term for "family" he learned from Lilo earlier and convinces Jumba to help rescue Lilo. Jumba, Pleakley, Stitch and Nani board Jumba's personal spaceship and chase after Gantu, rescuing Lilo. Back on the shore, the Grand Councilwoman arrives on Earth preparing to take Stitch into custody and is forced to retire Gantu for endangering Lilo and blames Jumba for the mess. Before Stitch goes into the spaceship, he tells the Councilwoman how he found his broken family and how much it means to them. Lilo then insists that, because Stitch is her pet under local law, taking him away would be tantamount to stealing. Rather impressed with Stitch's newfound civility and empathy, the Councilwoman goes against the Federation's prior decision and decrees that Stitch will live in a peaceful exile on Earth, entrusted to Lilo and Nani's care, and asks Cobra, revealed to be a former CIA agent that she previously met in 1973, to watch over them. Lilo, Nani and their newfound friends rebuild the house, and Jumba and Pleakley become members of Nani, Lilo and Stitch's family, all building a new life together.

## Cast and Characters

* Chris Sanders as Stitch/Experiment 626
* Daveigh Chase as Lilo Pelekai
* Tia Carrere as Nani Pelekai
* David Ogden Stiers as Dr. Jumba Jookiba
* Kevin McDonald as Agent Wendell Pleakley
* Ving Rhames as Cobra Bubbles
* Zoe Caldwell as Grand Councilwoman
* Kevin Michael Richardson as Captain Gantu
* Jason Scott Lee as David Kawena
* Miranda Paige Walls as Mertle Edmonds
* Kunewa Mook as Moses Puloki
* Amy Hill as Mrs. Hasagawa
* Susan Hegarty as Rescue Lady

## Sequels

### Stitch! The Movie

The film was released on August 26, 2003 as a direct-to-video sequel. It served as the pilot to the television series. Ex-captain Gantu is hired by the evil Dr. Hämsterviel to retrieve the remaining 625 experiments.

### Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch

The film was released on August 30, 2005 as a direct-to-video sequel. It is set at a time between the original film and Stitch! The Movie. Lilo and her classmate are preparing for a hula competition where the winner gets to perform at a local May Day festival.

#### The Origin of Stitch

This was a short film which was included on the Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch DVD. It sees Stitch finding Jumba's secret computer and becoming horrified at the revelation of what strange alien creatures were used to create him.

### Leroy & Stitch

The film was released on June 23, 2006 as a direct-to-video sequel. After three years, their mission to capture all 624 experiments and repurpose them on Earth has been completed, so Lilo and her family are honoured as heroes by the Galactic Alliance.

## Television Series

### Lilo & Stitch: The Series

The series premiered on September 20, 2003. It carried on where the film left off and charted Lilo & Stitch's efforts to capture and rehabilitate Jumba's remaining experiments.

### Stitch!

The series premiered on October 8, 2008. The anime series features a Japanese girl named Yuna Kamihara in place of Lilo and is set on a fictional island off the shore of Okinawa instead of Hawaii.

### Stitch & Ai

The series premiered on March 27, 2017. Taking place in China's Huangshan mountains and stars Stitch and a local girl named Wang Ai Ling.

## Production

### Development

Production of Lilo & Stitch began with then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner deciding that, in the wake of a number of high-profile and large-budget Disney animated features during the mid-1990s, the studio might try its hand at a smaller and less expensive film. The idea was inspired by the production of Dumbo, an economincally-made 1941 Walt Disney film produced in the wake of the more expensive Pinocchio and Fantasia. Chris Sanders, a head storyboard artist at Disney Feature Animation, was approached to pitch an idea. Sanders had created the character of Stitch in 1985 for an unsuccessful children's book pitch and had to now develop a concept that featured the character in an animated film. The storyline required a remote, non-urban location, so the movie was originally intended to take place in Kansas. Sanders' decision to change the film's setting to the Hawaiian island of Kaua'i was an important choice in defining the plot more clearly. No other animated feature had ever taken place on any of the Hawaiian islands before.

### Writing

Dean DeBlois, who had co-written Mulan with Chris Sanders, was brought on to co-write and co-direct Lilo & Stitch, while Disney executive Clark Spencer was assigned to produce. Unlike several previous and concurrent Disney Feature Animation productions, the film's pre-production team remained relatively small and isolated from upper management until the film went into full production. The character and set designs were based upon Sanders' personal artistic style.

While the animation team visited Kaua'i to research the locale, their tour guide explained the meaning of 'ohana as it applies to extended families. This concept of 'ohana became an important part of the movie.

The island of Kaua'i had also been featured in such films as Raiders of the Lost Ark and those from the Jurassic Park trilogy. The Disney animators faced the daunting task of meshing the film's plot, which showed the impoverished and dysfunctional life that many Hawaiians lived during the then-recent economic downturn, with the island's serene beauty. The actors voicing the film's young adults, Nani and David, were Tia Carrere, a local of Honolulu, and Jason Scott Lee, who is of Hawaiian descent and was raised in Hawaii. The voice actors assisted with rewriting the Hawaiian characters' dialogue in the proper colloquial dialect and also with the task of adding Hawaiian slang terms.

One innovative and unique aspect of the film is its strong focus on the relationship between two sisters, Lilo and Nani. Making the relationship between sisters into a major plot element is very rare in American animated films.

### Design and Animation

In a deviation from several decades' worth of Disney features, Sanders and DeBlois chose to use watercolour painted backgrounds for Lilo & Stitch, as opposed to the traditional gouache technique. While watercolours had been used for the early Disney animated shorts, as well as the early Disney features Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio and Dumbo, the technique had been largely abandoned by the mid-1940s in favour of less complicated media such as gouache. Sanders preferred that watercolours be used for Lilo & Stitch to evoke both the bright look of a storybook and the art direction of Dumbo, requiring the background artists to be trained in working with the medium. The character designs were based around Sanders' personal drawing style, eschewing the traditional Disney house style. The film's extraterrestrial elements, such as the spaceships, were designed to resemble marine life, such as whales and crabs.

### Marketing

Teaser trailers for the film parody trailers for other Disney films (three of which Sanders previously worked on) from the Disney Renaissance: Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Little Mermaid and The Lion King. These are called "Inter-Stitch-als" and are featured on Disney's official site as well as on the film's respective DVD release. The original actors were brought back to reprise their roles and were shocked when asked to act negatively towards Stitch. The trailers also include the AC/DC song track "Back in Black." In the United Kingdom, Lilo & Stitch trailers and TV ads featured a cover of Elvis' song "Suspicious Minds", performed by Gareth Gates, who became famous on the UK TV program Pop Idol. In the U.S. "Hound Dog" was used for both theatrical and TV trailers. The marketing campaign presented Stitch as the sort of "Disney Family Black Sheep". As a promotional campaign, comics of Lilo & Stitch were run in Disney Adventures prior to the film's release. The comics detailed events leading up to the film for both title characters, including the creation and escape of Stitch. These events were later contradicted by the sequel Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch rendering the comics non-canonical, but is notable to the series as introducing Experiment 625, Reuben, who was made a main character in the subsequent movies and TV series. The comic series has been released as a collective volume titled Comic Zone Volume 1: Lilo & Stitch.

## Release

### Box Office

Lilo & Stitch opened in second place with $35.3 million in its first weekend, less than $500,000 behind the film Minority Report. In its second week it fell to third, again behind the Steven Spielberg film coming in second. The film earned $145.8 million in the United States and Canada, and $127.3 million internationally, totalling $273.1 million globally. Box Office Mojo estimates that the film sold over 25 million tickets during its original run.

### Home Media

Lilo & Stitch was released on VHS and DVD on December 3, 2002. In 2003, a 2-disc DVD version was announced to come out along with Alice in Wonderland and Pocahontas, which were released in 2004 and 2005. A 2-disc Special Edition DVD of Lilo & Stitch was released in the UK on August 22, 2005, along with the UK release of Lilo & Stitch: Stitch Has a Glitch, but a release in the U.S. was affected by many delays. On March 24, 2009, Disney finally released the special edition DVD, which is called a 2-disc "Big Wave Edition". This new DVD has everything that the original DVD had and adds an audio commentary, a 2-hour documentary, more deleted scenes, a number of behind-the-scenes featurettes and some games. On June 11, 2013, Lilo & Stitch was released on Blu-ray alongside Lilo & Stitch 2 in a "2-Movie Collection".

## Reception

Lilo & Stitch received largely positive reception. Rotten Tomatoes reported that the film has an 86% "Certified Fresh" approval rating based on 148 reviews, with an average score of 7.27/10. The site's consensus reads, "Edgier than traditional Disney fare, Lilo & Stitch explores issues of family while providing a fun and charming story." The film has also earned a score of 73 on Metacritic, indicating "generally favourable reviews". Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4 and wrote "It's one of the most charming feature-length cartoons of recent years. Funny, sassy, startling, original and with six songs by Elvis." The film's success spawned a Lilo & Stitch franchise, with three sequel films and three television series.

Peter M. Nichols states that through the character of Nani and her struggles, the film appeals to older children better than such attempts by the studio to do so as The Emperor's New Groove, Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet.