NO-hana — Lilo & Stitch

A major reason why I’m no fan of remakes in general is that they’re often marketed as if they’re meant to be the newly definitive version of the original film, a full-on replacement for what existed before, and one you’re intended to pay for. This is a particularly glaring issue for Disney’s slew of remakes since 2010, because they’re recreations of animated classics that have been beloved for decades. It’s one thing if a fairly anonymous picture is given a fresh coat of paint, like The Amateur, because we don’t have a perfectly good rendition already in the back pocket, but when there’s a piece of cinematic art that helped to define our formative years and our adult worldviews, you can’t just swoop in and say, “This is the real version now,” and you most definitely can’t assert that you deserve a financial reward in the hundreds of millions of dollars simply because you have the ability to regurgitate your own intellectual property.

As such, remakes — especially high profile ones like the “live action” set from Disney — need to be judged by a different set of rules than original works, with a concentration on what’s added to the proceedings as well as what’s omitted, in order to justify their existence. Direct comparison is warranted, if not vital, because these movies have been such an integral part of our lives and a constant presence in our respective collections, be they in physical media, online streaming curations, or any number of associated merchandising tie-ins. The reason Disney’s remakes so often fail on a critical level is because the studio’s shortsighted avarice ignores this key distinction, instead banking on the nostalgia of older viewers and the lack of critical thinking skills from younger ones in order to profit. While several entries do wind up becoming successful in that narrow and immediate short term — sometimes obscenely so — they’re almost all ultimately seen as inferior, if not outright forgotten or derided as time goes on, as the products (and I use that term in the most capitalistic way possible) continually remove the heart and soul of the original animated works and insert formulaic, illogical, and focus group engineered schlock.

There is hope that this run of micromanaged mediocrity might finally be abating, as March’s Snow White remake was so bad (and still technically a “flop” because despite raking in $200 million worldwide it didn’t make back its astonishing $270 million budget) that it has apparently resulted in the suspension of a planned update of Tangled, and the brakes have been somewhat pumped on in-progress productions for reskins of The Aristocats, Bambi, and Hercules. The Moana remake, which only exists because Dwayne Johnson insisted on getting to play Maui for real, is still slated for a July 2026 release.

In the meantime, though, we have Lilo & Stitch, guaranteed to be a financial hit because of the fluffy blue alien’s marketability over the past 20 years (and a much more “modest” budget of $100 million), but which sadly succumbs to the same issues that doomed its photorealistic forebears. Like nearly every Disney remake (or remake-adjacent project) before it, the film is rendered soulless because of the studio’s myopic template of cashing in on our memories without considering the fact that we can see the results of the botched artistic surgery through instantly accessible 1-to-1 contrast with the 2002 original, readily available for anyone who cares to.

Dean Fleischer Camp takes the reins as director this time, an admittedly proper choice on paper given his rousing success with Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. If anyone can make a cute cartoon cryptid into a lovable lead in a quasi live action sphere, it’s him. However, you can tell fairly quickly that he’s simply another warm body subsumed by the corporate machine, as his deft intimate touches and expert scene constructions are absent, replaced by entry-level cinematography and hyperactive jump cut editing. The latter is distractingly bad, as the vast majority of shots last no longer than three seconds. This might make thematic sense if the scenes were orchestrated and edited in a way that aligns with the title characters’ chaotic natures and short attention spans, but even the more solemn moments are given this treatment.

For example, the famous “hammock” scene, where Nani alludes to her potential separation from Lilo while poignantly singing “Aloha Oe,” was one of the most emotional moments of the animated film. The bulk of it was presented as a single shot, with only the slightest cut to the sisters watching as Nani sets two flowers floating away into the night air, her mournful voice left unadorned by any backing music track. In this version, the dialogue leading up to the song is stilted, this Nani (Sydney Elizabeth Agudong) lazily strums a ukulele and almost sounds cheerful as she sings to Lilo (Maia Kealoha), and the picture cuts over a dozen times, including to an unrelated scene of Stitch (original creator, director, and voice actor Chris Sanders) in another location. The sentiment of the sequence is utterly deflated because the camera can’t stay in place long enough for us to observe and absorb the weight of the moment. This is but one of several instances where the flick gives off the distinct feel of a made-for-TV Disney Channel movie, which might have made some sense, as the animated film’s watercolor aesthetic invited comparisons to Disney Afternoon shows (which also made the transition to a half-hour series all the more easy), but because only the look is maintained and not the spirit or dramatic heft, it just comes off as lazy.

So, again we must ask when it comes to these so-called “reimaginings,” what does this version add to the story, and what does it take away? We’ll start with what’s been put in, because as we’ve so often seen, what these remakes Frankenstein onto the originals do little more than pad the runtime (mercifully here only increased by 13 minutes). The first is some really odd casting, mostly in the form of extended cameos from the previous film’s actors. Jason Scott Lee, the original voice of David, has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance as the manager of the luau restaurant where this version of Nani and David (Kaipo Dudoit) work. Conversely, Amy Hill, who only had a bit part as the elderly Mrs. Hasagawa in the first picture, is now elevated to a key support role as Tūtū, a neighbor who constantly offers to watch Lilo for Nani. This is beyond stupid, because it creates a plot hole for absolutely no reason. Part of why we love the first film is because of the difficulty faced by Nani as she tries to balance her life and find work while also caring for Lilo, who can’t be left alone, being a rambunctious six-year-old. Well, now we have a ready-made babysitter (who also happens to be David’s grandmother, because whatever), one who even takes Lilo to the animal shelter INSTEAD OF NANI, robbing us of the bonding between the sisters and the famous two-dollar purchase of Experiment 626. And yet, she conveniently doesn’t watch the child and her “dog” when the plot needs them to get in the way later on. Hill’s presence also informs the bafflingly insulting finale, one that calls the entire concept of “ohana” into question, which is the kindest thing I can say without going into spoilers.

Then there’s Tia Carrere, the original Nani. She’s here as Mrs. Kekoa, a social worker who largely renders Cobra Bubbles (Courtney B. Vance) redundant. Oh he’s still there, but he’s firmly established as a CIA agent right from the off, and an ineffectual one at that. Gone is the intimidating presence that Ving Rhames got across even in cartoon form, and instead we have two characters who do not add up to a legit threat, only breathing obstacles. Vance is basically just a stand-in for half the movie, while Carrere is just a kinder face on Rhames’ dialogue from before, with the tacked-on insipidness of a medical emergency without health insurance serving as the final straw for the state to seek custody of Lilo.

The second new element is sadly a reappearance of the worst trope of these remakes, converting the leads into essentially flawless characters, because somehow the suits at Disney still think that having a female protagonist make mistakes and learn from them is tant amount to outright hostility and misogyny. Lilo isn’t the most well-behaved child in this version, but she’s also not her prepubescent psychopathic self. She’s far too sweet and innocent, and not the barely-controlled agent of chaos we came to know and love. Her recklessness was her charm, and it’s what made her such a great match for Stitch. They were two sides of the same coin, with Stitch’s weirdness being on the outside and Lilo’s being more internal and personality-based. Here, she’s just a lonely child whose only real mischief is “sneaking” into a local hotel (where the staff makes it clear that they know she’s there) just so she can hang out in the pool and get free sodas. A hellion she is not.

And then we have Nani, who is given so much attention and grace that a more honest title for the film would have been The “Nani is Perfect” Story, Occasionally Featuring Lilo & Stitch. Seriously, the focus of the flick shifts so much to her dreams and ambitions that Agudong is even given top billing in the closing credits. But more importantly, she becomes yet another bland mannequin of girl power. We loved the original Nani because she was a good, normal person put in an impossible situation of being both sister and mother to Lilo after the death of their parents, struggling against every bit of bad luck imaginable to make things work. That made her both endearing and relatable. It was so refreshing to see someone in a Disney film go through the wringer but still keep her head screwed on and endure, even finding the rare moments of joy in the midst of a challenge that no one should have foisted upon them. The more I watch the original (which is a lot considering I only saw it for the first time about 10 years ago), the more I adore her, especially when I’m fighting tooth and nail right now to find stable work myself. Like her, I’m sending off applications and going into interviews lying through my teeth about how enthusiastic I am when in reality all I want is a paycheck and a purpose. Nani made a big show about how she lives her life through coffee, while I do my best to convince faceless corporations that my entire career has built up to writing ad copy for makeup influencers.

This Nani doesn’t get such nuance. Instead, she’s a genius student with a passion for marine biology (there’s a running gag from Tūtū and Lilo about her “joining the Marines” which never once lands), and she turned down a full-ride scholarship to her dream college (San Diego State for some reason; I’m pretty sure Hawaii has several great schools for this field of study) to care for Lilo. So now, instead of being a loving sister doing her best to figure things out as she goes, she’s a perfect victim, firmly established as being better than all of us watching and all the other plebeians in her community, whose potential has been stolen by the burden that is Lilo. The story becomes more about how she’s been unjustly put upon by the unseen hand of fate, and how she needs to get away from her sister rather than become closer to her, all her setbacks caused more by side glances at the title pair than their direct involvement and destructiveness. You couldn’t miss the point more if you spent three minutes watching a tuft of Simba’s hair being rolled into a ball of shit or having Belle’s mother die of the plague. Oh wait.

All this is to say that by making these “enhancements,” the core human relationship has its own humanity excised, because Lilo and Nani no longer feel like real people. As obnoxious as she could be, the animated Lilo is probably one of the most honest and accurate depictions of a grade school kid ever put to screen. Also, not for nothing, but I always kind of liked that the cartoon version of Nani wasn’t an “idealized” young woman like so many other Disney protagonists, to the point of promoting an unhealthy body image. She had realistic curves, noticeable body fat, and even something of a dumpy posture because she constantly had to outrun and outsmart a diminutive ball of energy. You could see that David’s attraction to her was just as much for who she was as a person rather than the fact that she looked decent in a bikini. Here, Agudong is just another “hottie.” Her version of Nani isn’t defined by her appearance, but she’s still put on a pedestal despite the fact that she doesn’t stand out in a crowd (apart from some online whiners who complain that her complexion isn’t dark enough to be “true” Hawaiian, to which I say, get a freaking life, she was born and raised in Kauai). She and Kealoha don’t necessarily do a bad job, but they just feel like performances rather than personalities.

Even when something new initially comes off as creative, it’s done in a slapdash manner. When Stitch arrives on Earth, he crashes a wedding just to get some cake. Some of his antics are ramped up in this edition, and to be fair his CGI design is realistic enough to be appropriately adorable when needed. Seeing him go nuts at a reception is a clever bit of escalation, and a sign of potential for future shenanigans, but it ends up raising questions that it doesn’t need to. Several people take pictures of Stitch, and the incident makes the local news. This is after he’s hit by a bus (instead of the comical line of trucks last time) and taken to the shelter, presumably mortally injured. Since this is now a story of some import and curiosity, how is Lilo even allowed to adopt him without some form of follow-up from the media and/or law enforcement? The answer is, we just pretend it didn’t happen. Hey, they’re playing “Uptown Funk!” I love that song! What were we talking about?

Now, to the stuff that was removed, and hoo boy, do we have some doozies here. Apart from the aforementioned character development and stakes, we have the following glaring omissions: Captain Gantu is now “Captain Not Appearing in this Film,” his menace replaced by having Jumba (Zach Galifianakis) just be the main villain. Jumba himself has almost no personality, and while I love Galifianakis as an actor and comedian, his voice and demeanor just don’t gel with Jumba’s character. Yes, I know David Ogden Stiers is dead, but you could have easily gotten a more burly actor with a deeper, gruffer (and potentially more sinister sounding) voice to get the job done. My thoughts immediately went to Stefan Kapičić, best known as Colossus in the Deadpool films and as one of the doomed crewmen in The Last Voyage of the Demeter. He would have been more than serviceable, but no, we needed Galifianakis so that we can make fat jokes. Along those same lines, Pleakley is now played by Billy Magnussen instead of Kevin McDonald — who is very much still alive — and his dynamic with Jumba is completely absent, along with their playfully bad attempts to blend into the crowd. Part of the fun of the original was that their disguises were so awful that it was just as unbelievable that they’d be mistaken for humans as Stitch would be considered a dog. All of that is gone, as the aliens’ CGI designs are quickly waved off with a “cloning device” that allows them to pose as a hotel guest and employee, but really just be the actors in normal wardrobe. Some have already expressed outrage that Pleakley doesn’t get to dress in drag anymore, which doesn’t bother me because that’s not an identity issue that I experience, but I can still just miss the silliness of having a gelatinous cyclops in a wig.

I already mentioned that this movie got rid of the key scene of how Nani brought Lilo to the shelter, but there are other crucial character moments that are just dismissed. Lilo’s obsession with Elvis is used only for background music purposes, deleting the crazy nonsensical joy of watching Stitch perform as The King. Lilo’s lateness for hula practice (here converted into a recital that Nani misses because of car troubles — the payoff for this is mindbogglingly dumb) is compressed to just one line about giving a fish a sandwich rather than the mad logic of having to get peanut butter because tuna would be an abomination, a comically odd rant that instantly established Lilo’s charisma last time out. Lilo’s rival Mertle (Emery Hookano-Briel) barely shows up, and only to offer one-note, Stephen King-level perfunctory bullying. The surfing scene where Stitch learns to like the water is instigated by Nani this time instead of David (David himself is basically a non-entity) because she landed a job as a surf instructor (such a perfect young person who should never face adversity!). Lilo no longer has a photography hobby. The fat guy who could never eat his mint chocolate chip ice cream last time is now stymied while trying to eat a shave ice (does that count as character progression?).

But worst of all, the Ugly Duckling stuff is cut. I was dumbfounded at this. While Lilo’s retelling of the story wasn’t exactly accurate to the actual fable (it was more a reference to Disney’s Oscar-winning short film, including replicating the art style), in the original movie it was presented as a lost soul, alone and afraid until he could find his family, and rejected for his appearance. It was a cute moment that became the biggest emotional gut punch of the entire picture when Stitch himself runs away and declares that he’s lost. For all the tomfoolery of the first half of the narrative, that scene made viewers the world over (myself included) weep for a blue alien koala thingy. That was no small feat. It’s also what ultimately redeems Stitch when he comes back, reveals his nature to Nani, and shows her that he has learned the true meaning of “ohana.”

Here though? Disappeared. And for no reason. It just isn’t there, and its absence deprives us of any core engagement with the titular duo. It reminded me of one of the many reasons why the Lion King remake was so terrible. Two of the most pivotal moments, arguably the morals of the whole story, were just dismissed. The first was Rafiki demonstrating with his stick how the past can hurt, but we can learn from it. The second was the vision of Mufasa telling Simba, “You have forgotten who you are, and so forgotten me.” The movie didn’t have time for this essential wisdom, but it did have time for several scenes of Nala being a wet blanket and a solid 90 seconds of the mouse scurrying around Scar’s den only for it to NOT get caught in his pouncing paws. That’s how egregious this removal is. Stitch is indeed lost, but only in the most nihilistic sense.

There are so many things wrong with this film that I haven’t even mentioned yet, like a text joke from the opening on the Galactic Federation ship that’s never paid off, having half of Stitch’s lines delivered with the exact same tone and inflection as before, leading me to believe that they were simply edited in rather than having Sanders re-record them, or the fact that several of those repurposed lines are callbacks to scenes from the original that were not reproduced for this version. So much of this relies on nostalgia to not only come off as passable, but to fill in the literary gaps that the final cut creates for itself.

And yet, I can’t ultimately say that I hated it. It is one of the better Disney remakes, basically by default, because in spite of its many, many shortcomings, the performances are competent, and Lilo and Nani do have chemistry, albeit misplaced on a thematic level. I’ll even admit that I got a few genuine laughs out of it all (mostly from Stitch and Pleakley).

But the central failure of this picture is the same as just about every other ill-advised and ill-conceived adaptation of Disney’s animated canon. Significant story and character moments are taken out, only to be replaced by superfluous fluff that ultimately adds nothing of value, and once again we have to bend over backwards to make our female leads perfect from birth lest we offend some nebulous crusader of political correctness that doesn’t exist. Then the whole thing is packaged like a half-assed Disney Channel feature that relies almost entirely on our affections for what we already can watch whenever we want, and sold as if it now stands as the “real” version, even though it always pales in comparison. I’m sure I won’t be the first to make this reference, but while this Lilo & Stitch isn’t objectively awful on every level like some of its peers, it will fade into obscurity just the same, left behind and forgotten, and deservedly so.

Grade: C-

Join the conversation in the comments below! What film should I review next? How many more Disney classics can be ruined by the remake homogenizer? What’s your favorite Elvis song? Let me know! And remember, you can follow me on Twitter (fuck “X”) as well as Bluesky, and subscribe to my YouTube channel for even more content, and check out the entire BTRP Media Network at btrpmedia.com!

Originally published at http://actuallypaid.com on May 25, 2025.