©Courtesy of Disney

After the controversies that a few weeks ago contributed to sinking at the box-office the live-action Snow White with Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot, at Disney they are most likely walking on eggshells. This new version of Lilo & Stitch should theoretically help the Major to score another commercial hit in order to get back on track. The movie directed by Dean Fleischer Camp (Marcel the Shell with Shoes On) shows from the very beginning a more conservative approach to the masterpiece released in 2002, following pretty closely the original story and characters.

And this is the worst possible mistake they could have made, the reason being that what works in an animation movie doesn’t necessarily work with characters played by real actors. What was fun to watch more than twenty years ago through the lens and the distance that animation can apply to the audience’s mind – both young viewers and adults – it is almost automatically leveled, if not completely erased, when those actions are played by actors you can feel closer to yourself and your reality.

Without spoiling the plot if you haven’t seen the first Lilo & Stitch, the young protagonist played today by Maia Kealoha during the movie, especially in the first part, is accountable for a behavior that it’s an euphemism to declare as problematic, if not abusive. It is sincerely difficult to understand how at Disney they didn’t think that seeing on big screen a six-year old girl pushing another kid out of a stage, stealing someone else’s toy-car, accidentally setting on fire a restaurant full of clients and almost drowning in the ocean could not be fun. It is in fact far from being fun.

©Courtesy of Disney

It is actually quite the opposite. Seeing her older daughter that is not able to take care of her, not even give her at least a clean house where to live or a fridge with some basic healthy food, is not fun. To be completely honest, having a daughter who has almost Lilo’s age could probably affect my feelings and my judgment about the uncomfortable feelings I experienced watching this new Lilo & Stitch, but nonetheless I dare anyone arguing with me that seeing the young girl that was bothering Lilo flying down from that stage provoked a laugh or even simply a shrug. 

And then a second wave of doubts arrives about this troubling depiction of the young protagonist: was it lack of common sense by Disney or was Lilo purposely developed this way? Let me rephrase the question, and please be fully aware that at this point I could be biased about the entire production: would Lilo have been portrayed the same way if she would originally have been a white girl? Except for a couple of scenes that show the beauty and the attraction of Hawaii, this movie definitely doesn’t provide a good service to the indigenous people’s culture and traditions…

©Courtesy of Disney

Let’s try anyway to put aside these moral and psychological issues and let’s analyze the movie itself: It doesn’t get better. In this new live-action version Stitch has no personality at all. Unlike the original blue multi-armed monster, this doesn’t have a real narrative arc that allows the audience to experience the little alien developing nice feelings towards the new friend and her family. The rhythm of the editing is too fast, turning the story into a rollercoaster of gags and situations where none of the characters are fully developed.

The only real fun moment in Lilo & Stitch is when Jumba Jookiba and Pleakley land on Heart and turn into Zach Galifianakis and Billy Magnussen. The presentation of the two characters is fresh and slightly intriguing, but all of a sudden they are completely abandoned to their unidimensional destiny, which is in the end the same as the entire movie. Lilo & Stitch drags a series of boring, unoriginal scenes until the rhetorical ending, leaving with the bitter taste of another live-action movie that didn’t really need to be produced. If Lilo & Stitch will turn out to be a box-office success, then there’s the chance Disney will keep following this path about future live-action adaptations of its classics. And this is probably even more concerning than the movie itself…

©Courtesy of Disney

Rate: D

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Here’s the trailer for Lily & Stitch: