ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — The latest of the Disney live action remakes hits theaters like a crash-landed alien ship just in time for Memorial Day.
“LILO & STITCH” (2025, 108 min., directed by Dean Fleischer Camp)
The original “Lilo & Stitch” was my favorite animated movie when I was a kid. I loved the direct-to-video sequels, too: I have vivid memories of checking out “Leroy & Stitch” (2006) from the local Blockbuster Video over and over.
As Disney continues to produce live-action remakes of the company’s long line of beloved animated classics, “Lilo & Stitch” is the one which should appeal to my generational nostalgia in the same way the Disney Renaissance reimaginings – “The Little Mermaid,” “Aladdin,” “The Lion King” and “Beauty and the Beast” – raked in millions of dollars in the late 2010s and early 2020s.
Read our review of “Snow White” here.
However, if this year’s “Snow White” was an example of Disney reaching too far back, mining a product no one was clamoring for, “Lilo & Stitch” might be reaching too close to present day. True, the original film was released over 20 years ago, but Stitch has lived in the cultural consciousness in utter ubiquity, particularly in Disney merchandising. The original film does not require updates in the same way “Cinderella” or the misbegotten “Aladdin” might. It still feels resonant and authentic to the present moment.
One of the best examples of this in the new film is a wink at a classic line from the original. Lilo, the film’s troublemaking, six-year-old protagonist, is having a conversation with her older sister Nani’s crush. In the 2002 film, she references reading her sister’s diary. In the 2025 “update,” she reads her text messages instead. It’s a clunky, clumsy revision of something that didn’t require a rewrite. It’s not like 2002 Lilo said she was dialing up the modem to read Nani’s AOL Instant Messages.
Read our review of “Mufasa: The Lion King” here.
What is commendable about the new film is setting, shooting and casting the movie in Hawaii. The new Lilo, the eight-year-old Maia Kealoha, is of Native Hawaiian descent, and is a fabulous talent in the new film. Kealoha has the comic timing, spunky attitude and the piercing screams of her animated counterpart down, but she brings necessary diversity to the story, too. In her original incarnation, white actress Daveigh Chase voiced Lilo.
Despite how great Kealoha is, the film’s biggest talent might be Sydney Agudong as the new Nani. Agudong gives an athletic, empathetic and comic performance as Lilo’s older sister, a character struggling to raise her a little kid and be an adult at the same time. The sisters’ parents have passed away, leaving Nani to double as sister and mom and leave her own needs behind. Much of the film hinges on Agudong playing a convincing foil to Kealoha’s chaos, and she succeeds with flying colors, even in the literal shadow of the original Nani. In another wink to the source material, Nani’s original voice actor, Hawaiian actress Tia Carrere, plays the sisters’ supervising social worker.
I do think that the script for this version of the story is significantly more bloated and less funny the animated version. The alien characters are also oddly reconstituted into human form for most of the movie, perhaps for budgetary reasons, which dilutes what makes the cast of the original so fun. The longer runtime doesn’t substitute jokes for emotions, either. There are fewer emotional beats for Stitch, for example, even if he does look fantastic in CGI.
But that’s all okay.
In a conversation with a friend I had after seeing the movie, he suggested that the live-action “Lilo & Stitch” makes this story accessible for a new generation. In an age where Disney+ is a staple crop for many families’ streaming cabinets, permitting access to any story from the Disney library at any time, I don’t think that’s it, exactly.
What the live-action “Lilo & Stitch” should become is an interesting pairing with the original film. If kids see animated Lilo and connect her to Kealoha, I think that this movie has done its job. I don’t think the new “Lilo & Stitch” can – or will – supplant the original, but I hope the two takes on this story will support and uplift the best parts of each other, despite their conflicting elements. They’re imperfect sisters, just like Lilo and Nani.
Rating: 3/5
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