|
 |
|
Lilo & Stitch
***
Cinema Releases - October 4, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate U. USA.
85 minutes. Written and directed by Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders; based on
an idea by Sanders. An animated film featuring the voices of Daveigh Chase,
Chris Sanders, Tia Carrere, Jason Scott Lee, David Ogden Stiers, Ving Rhames,
Kevin McDonald, Zoe Caldwell.
"Lilo & Stitch" is an odd and
quite wonderful Disney movie; bright, tropical, filled with creativity and
animation of great detail. I have quibbles with some of the film's later
moments, but the early and middle passages are surprising in how much they
engage and even touch us. This is not a classical dramatic animated feature,
nor a hip, contemporary, in-jokey one. It's sort of in-between, and it
works.
The movie opens on the planet of Turo, whose creatures
and technology have been designed with imagination more inspiring than anything
in "Attack of the Clones". As we're introduced, the Grand Council is deciding
on the fate of a mad scientist named Jumba Jookiba (voiced by David Ogden
Stiers), whose Experiment 626 has broken laws regarding genetic experimentation.
The creature, later named 'Stitch', has been created to be resistant to all
sorts of torture and destroy everything in its path. And within the first
few minutes of the film, it of course escapes to Earth, and must be retrieved
by a Grand Council search party.
Stitch is a quite amazing creation. He has four
arms, any of which can be hidden. He can wield sharp teeth, and unleash a
pretty darn evil giggle. He doesn't at first look harmful, what with his
small size and all, but he is a malevolent little monster, and his escape
scene reveals some vicious smarts.
On Earth, we meet a lovely little Hawaiian girl
named Lilo (Daviegh Chase), who lives in a house of poor upkeep with her
teenage sister. She hasn't got much going for her except her Elvis Presley
records, but she's a creative kid. Her one ragged doll has more personality
than the perfect Barbies of the kids who refuse to play with her at school.
Those girls are too attached to convention to recognise the richness of genuine
intelligence.
Lilo adopts Stitch when he falls to her island;
she thinks the creature is some kind of strange dog, albeit one who destroys
everything in sight and makes unsavoury noises. She's a lonely girl who needs
a friend, and he turns out to be a more reasonable being than at first it
seemed. Considering how thoroughly the movie sets Stitch up as a fiend, it's
alarming how cute he is when trying to be loved. His muffled voice is a charmer,
and even when tearing stuff up, he is after all simply acting by his
nature.
"Lilo & Stitch" wraps us up so much with its
characters, locations and ideas that it took me a while to realise how the
plot is essentially "E.T.", with one or two features turned on their heads.
It's nice to see a Disney film whose quirks include Elvis songs, and some
of the storytelling choices are original enough to be disorientating. What
a masterstroke it was to set the Earth segments on a Hawaiian island, rather
than some random mainland suburb of America. Instead of showing Stitch in
an obviously fish-out-of-water context, this movie gives us a depiction of
our own world that is almost as colourful and unfamiliar as its vision of
outer space.
The climax, as I've suggested, goes a bit pear-shaped.
"Lilo & Stitch" should be a four-star movie, but there's a final action
sequence that goes on way too long, and in the last few minutes Stitch begins
to talk in full sentences, which sounds neither scary nor adorable, just
annoying. The music over the end credits is a cover of "Suspicious Minds"
by plastic pop icon Gareth Gates, and putting that on your movie is as good
a way as any to burst any bubbles of happiness that might be floating around.
This is a film to cherish... for most of the way.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
2002 Reviews
(alphabetical)
2002 Reviews (by star
rating)
Archive of all cinema reviews
(alphabetical)
Review Archive
Index
UK
Critic main page
|
|
![[Image]](http://www.ukcritic.com/posbanr2.gif)