Lilo & Stitch

**Lilo & Stitch** is a 2002 animated film directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, and is the first instalment in the Lilo & Stitch franchise.

The film was the second of three Disney animated feature films that were produced primarily at the Florida animation studio in Disney's Hollywood Studios (then named Disney-MGM Studios) at Walt Disney World.

It is the 42nd Disney animated feature film and premiered on June 26, 2002.

## Plot

On Kauaʻi, Hawaii, young and rambunctious, yet eccentric Lilo Pelekai struggles to be taken care of by her older sister, Nani, since their parents died in a car crash. One day, social worker Cobra Bubbles expresses increasing concern about whether or not Nani can take adequate care of Lilo. Since Lilo's hula classmates have ostracized 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 criminal named Experiment 626, who is impersonating a dog after being taken in at the shelter. Experiment 626 is exceptionally strong and intelligent but also tends to cause chaos. Despite Nani's doubts, Lilo adopts and renames 626 "Stitch" and shows him around the island. That evening, at the restaurant where Nani works, extra-terrestrial mad scientist Dr. Jumba Jookiba, who was recently arrested by the Galactic Federation after making Stitch, and his partner, Agent Wendell Pleakley, the council's Earth 'expert', unsuccessfully attempt to capture Stitch. The ensuing destructive chaos is blamed on Stitch, which results in Nani getting fired. The next day, Cobra Bubbles warns Nani that he will have to place Lilo with a foster family if she doesn't find 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, it means that Lilo will have to be taken away if Nani doesn't find 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 fewer 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 shamefully reveals his alien identity before they are captured by Gantu. Stitch manages to escape from Gantu's ship and is confronted by Nani, who had witnessed Lilo's 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 ʻohana, a term for "family" he learned from Lilo earlier. Stitch 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. She retires Gantu for his failure to capture Stitch and blames Jumba for the mess. Before Stitch goes into the spaceship, he tells the Councilwoman how he found his broken but good family and how much 'ohana means to them. Lilo then insists that, because she paid for Stitch at the shelter and has a stamped receipt to show for it, 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 reverses the Federation's prior decision and decrees that Stitch will live in a peaceful exile on Earth, entrusted to Lilo and Nani's care. She then tells Cobra, revealed to be a former CIA agent that she previously met in 1973 at Roswell, that the family will be under the care of the Galactic Federation. Lilo, Nani, and their newfound friends rebuild their 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
* Daveigh Chase as Lilo Pelekai
* Tia Carrere as Nani Pelekai
* David Odgen Stiers as Dr. Jumba Jookiba
* Kevin McDonald as Agt. Wendell Pleakley
* Ving Rhames as Cobra Bubbles
* Kevin Michael Richardson as Captain Gantu
* Zoe Caldwell as Grand Councilwoman
* 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 (2003)
* Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch (2005)
* Leroy & Stitch (2006)

## 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 economically-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's decision to change the film's setting to the Hawaiian island of Kauaʻi 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 (1998) 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's personal artistic style.

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

The island of Kauaʻi 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 (1937), Pinocchio (1940), and Dumbo (1941), 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 animation itself was all based on 2D work as the budget lacked funds to incorporate computer generated imagery. The character designs were based around Sanders's personal drawing style, eschewing the traditional Disney house style. Because of the limited budget, details like pockets or designs on clothing were avoided in the animation process, and as they could not afford to do shadows throughout much of the film, many of the scenes took place in shaded areas, saving the use of shadows for more pivotal scenes.

The film's extra-terrestrial elements, such as the spaceships, were designed to resemble marine life, such as whales and crabs. One planned scene in the film involved Stitch hijacking a Boeing 747 airliner and piloting it in a cartoonish manner through a city. However, following the September 11 attacks with only a few weeks left in production, this scene was revamped at a large cost to have Stitch steal Jumba and Pleakley's alien craft instead, revamping the airliner's design to look like an alien spacecraft, though the final design still has engines that resembled the 747's jet engines, according to Sanders.

Even after this adjustment, the team had enough budget for about two additional minutes of animation, which was used to create the epilogue montage of Lilo, Nani, and Stitch becoming a new family.

### 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 US, "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. Most of the comic series have been released as a collective volume titled Comic Zone Volume 1: Lilo & Stitch.

### Deleted Scenes

Several major elements of the film changed during production. Originally, Stitch was the leader of an intergalactic gang, and Jumba was one of his former cronies summoned by the Intergalactic Council to capture Stitch. Test audience response to early versions of the film resulted in the change of Stitch and Jumba's relationship to that of creation and creator, respectively.

The biggest change came to the film's third act, which had Stitch, Nani, Jumba, and Pleakley hijacking a Boeing 747 jet from Lihue Airport to save Lilo; the scene had the quartet chasing Gantu through downtown Honolulu, scraping against buildings and coming dangerously close to the ground. After the terrorist attacks occurred on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the film's climax was completely reworked so that they instead flew Jumba's spaceship through the mountains of Kauaʻi. This revision was done primarily by replacing the CGI model of the 747 with that of Jumba's spaceship, with only a few shots in the sequence fully re-animated.

Another scene that was deleted was one of Lilo's attempts to make Stitch into a model citizen by notifying tourists on the beach about the tsunami warning sirens, which she knows are being tested that day. The original version of Jumba attacking Stitch in Lilo's home was found to be too violent by test audiences and was revised to make it more comedic. There was also a scene in which Lilo introduces Stitch to Pudge the fish, which ultimately leads to the fish's death. Lilo then takes Pudge's body to the same graveyard where her parents were buried, and thus Stitch learns the consequences of his actions and gains a better understanding of mortality.

A scene was removed where Nani brings Lilo pizza and then Lilo tells herself a bedtime story about a friendly and stinky bear named Toaster. It was replaced with the scene where Lilo and Nani talk about being family because test audiences had mistaken Nani for Lilo's mother. The trial scene originally had Stitch as the defendant, and Jumba is not present. This was changed because the film directors thought the Intergalactic Council had to blame him for creating Stitch.

## Release

### Home Media

Lilo & Stitch was released on VHS and DVD on December 3, 2002. During the first day of release, more than 3 million DVD copies were sold. This THX certified DVD release features a variety of bonus features, such as a Build An Alien Experiment game, audio commentary, music videos, deleted scenes, teaser trailers and DVD-ROM. In 2003, a 2-disc DVD version was announced to come out along with Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Pocahontas (1995), 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 2: Stitch Has a Glitch (2005), but a release in the US 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

### Critical Response

Lilo & Stitch received largely positive reception. Rotten Tomatoes reported that the film has an 86% "Certified Fresh" approval rating based on 147 reviews, with an average score of 7.3 out of 10. The site's consensus reads, "Edgier than traditional Disney fare, Lilo and 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. This film has more Elvis Presley performed songs in it than any other film, including films that Presley himself was in.

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.

### 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 after Mr. Deeds. As soon as Men in Black II was released, Lilo & Stitch plunged into fourth place. Despite this, the film continued to draw in families while other major summer blockbusters like Spider-Man and Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones ruled the box office. Additionally, it would go on to compete against the Warner Bros. live-action/computer-animated film Scooby-Doo. The film earned $145.8 million in the United States and Canada, and $127.3 million internationally, totalling $273.1 million globally. It was the second-highest-grossing animated film of 2002, behind 20th Century Fox's Ice Age. They were the only two animated films to approach the $100 million mark that year. Box Office Mojo estimates that the film sold over 25 million tickets during its original run.