There’s a good chance that, over two decades on, most people have forgotten just how emotionally charged the original Lilo & Stitch really was. Yes, it’s a film about a blue alien who looks like what you’d get if a Gremlin swallowed a plushie and got electrocuted—but beneath the chaos and Elvis soundtrack, it was also about a family barely clinging together after life hit them with a brick.

At the heart of it all: Lilo, a five-year-old hurricane in human form, and Stitch, an alien engineered for destruction who ends up crash-landing into her life like an adorable war crime. Together, they cause more mayhem than a toddler with a taser, but it’s all wrapped up in soft fur, surf music, and that oh-so-quotable word: ohana. It wasn’t just another wacky kids’ film—it had soul, teeth, and just the right amount of chaos.

And look, I’ll admit, this one’s personal. Lilo & Stitch might be Disney’s most unhinged IP, and easily my favourite. My younger sister—whose name closely resembles “Lilo”—was absolutely obsessed. I got nicknamed Stitch more times than I can count, mostly because I was small, chaotic, and apparently “not from this planet.”

So with that out of the way… spoilers ahead for this more-than-two-decades-old tale of aliens, social workers, and familial trauma wrapped in surfboards and Elvis.

Cartoons Cushion the Blow—Reality Just Breaks Your Blender

But here’s the problem: all that warm, fuzzy brilliance from the animated classic takes a bit of a nosedive when you swap vibrant, stylised cartoon chaos for the harsh light of live-action reality. Suddenly, the slapstick doesn’t land quite the same when it’s framed with real-world lighting and real-world consequences. Dean Fleischer Camp’s remake does its best to retain the original’s charm, but you can’t help but notice the weight of grown-up problems dragging it down. Like, it’s all well and good watching Stitch blast a hole in the wall, but it’s harder to laugh when your adult brain is screaming, “Who’s paying for the drywall?”

Maybe that’s just me, the kind of person who watches Home Alone and wonders if the McAllisters ever filed an insurance claim for the tarantula and paint can damage. But seriously—animated films, especially the good ones, manage to bottle heavy emotional themes and serve them in a way that doesn’t feel like you’re about to spiral into an existential crisis. There’s a reason animation works so well for these stories: it cushions the blow. It makes trauma digestible. Like sneaking vegetables into a smoothie.

And that’s something the House of Mouse seems to keep forgetting with all these live-action remakes. Animation isn’t just “for kids”—it’s a medium with power, style, and emotional nuance. Not everything needs to be shoved through a photorealistic filter just because the tech exists.

To its credit, this remake does have a few clever touches. Chris Kekaniokalani Bright and Mike Van Waes’ script does some light reshuffling of the original story. There’s a nod to the OG cast, with Amy Hill, who originally played Mrs. Hasagawa, reimagined as Tutu and Tia Carrere now playing a social worker instead of voicing Nani. It’s a sweet, if slightly nostalgic, gesture.

And yes—chasing down the walking blue-furry Deus Ex Machina are the galaxy’s least discreet tag team: Dr. Jumba Jookiba and Agent Pleakley. Billy Magnussen absolutely nails the latter—his Pleakley is every bit as delightfully neurotic and fashion-obsessed as we remember, like an alien who crash-landed into a Forever 21 and never left, albeit the CGI design of him is something that’ll probably give me nightmares to come. And then there’s Jumba, played by Zach Galifianakis, and… look, I love Galifianakis. I really do. But his take on the mad scientist feels oddly subdued. He clearly wasn’t trying to mimic the late David Ogden Stiers, whose original performance was theatrical, booming, and slightly unhinged in the best way, but whatever Galifianakis was going for, it just feels a bit out of step with everything else. Not bad, just… strangely misplaced. Like wearing Crocs to a funeral.

And that tonal mismatch isn’t isolated. Maia Kealoha and Sydney Agudong both do a faithful job of embodying Lilo and Nani. You can tell they get their characters, and the emotional beats mostly land. But like I said before, translating animated slapstick into live-action is like trying to remake Tom and Jerry with actual rodents—it doesn’t quite click. Take the initial argument that Lilo and Nani have at the beginning of the film when the council worker comes to visit. They try to replicate it one-to-one and it just didn’t feel right. The gags land flatter, and it ends up undercutting some otherwise solid performances. It’s not on the actors. It’s the medium itself tripping over its own logic.

But despite all these tweaks and tributes, the core remains the same, for the better, might I add. This is a story about family and the emotional scaffolding needed to keep one from collapsing. That kind of drama was always there—it’s just that, in live-action, it’s a little harder to ignore when your whimsical alien comedy is now sharing a room with the economic anxiety of raising a child.

A Hawaiian Rollercoaster

Things kick off at a solid clip, reintroducing us to the wonderfully deranged sci-fi setup: Stitch—still voiced by co-director Chris Sanders, bless him—is a six-legged war crime in fur form, brewed in a lab by Dr. Jumba Jookiba, who seems to have gone to the “chaos goblin” school of genetic engineering. The end goal? To make something small, cute, and capable of levelling a small nation. Mission accomplished.

Naturally, the galactic powers-that-be aren’t thrilled. The Grand Councilwoman—voiced by the eternally disappointed Hannah Waddingham—gathers her interstellar HR department and promptly banishes Stitch to deep space, branding him “so naughty” with the kind of dramatic disdain usually reserved for toddlers who’ve thrown spaghetti at the wall.

Of course, our little gremlin escapes and crash-lands on Earth—a planet apparently protected because it’s crucial to mosquito conservation. Yes, really. That joke from the original is still here, and it’s still hilarious. Somewhere, an alien civil servant decided Earth was worth preserving… for the bugs. Incredible.

Up to this point, the film sticks close to the source material. Alien design? Vibrant. Spaceships? Shiny. There’s even an axelottl-like alien who’s ready to nuke Earth for the sheer serotonin hit of it—easily the spiritual cousin of every multiplayer gamer who’s ever chosen violence over strategy.

But then we hit Earth… and suddenly, that comforting animated sheen evaporates. We’re dropped back into live-action territory, where the fun now has to contend with things like gravity, realism, and the crushing weight of visual plausibility. And it’s here where the remake reminds you: this is technically the real world now. Sort of. Maybe.

Now, despite living in what looks like the dictionary definition of paradise—Hawaii, beaches, sunshine, tourism brochures practically printing themselves—Lilo’s life is anything but. Played with genuine spark by newcomer Maia Kealoha, Lilo is navigating the aftermath of tragedy. Her parents are gone, her big sister Nani (played with grounded brilliance by Sydney Agudong) is barely keeping the lights on, and Lilo herself is just a little too clever and eccentric to gel with other kids. All she really wants is a friend.

To the film’s credit, it doesn’t play her struggles for cheap sentiment. Lilo’s loneliness is treated with the same emotional weight as Nani’s grown-up desperation—juggling jobs, time, and sanity, all while a social worker looms like a bureaucratic Grim Reaper. Enter Stitch, fresh off his interstellar jailbreak, crash-landing straight into Lilo’s chaotic life. Their iconic meet-cute still happens at an animal shelter, but here’s where the live-action filter stumbles again. In the cartoon, Stitch could just about pass as a deranged French bulldog on meth. In live-action? Well, I think they did his design justice. Although now in the live action, the idea that anyone believes he’s a dog is less suspension of disbelief and more full-on brain damage.

Floating somewhere in this Bermuda triangle of chaos is Courtney B. Vance as Cobra Bubbles, the CIA operative/social worker/human wall of authority. And looming over all of this? The gut-wrenching reality that Nani might lose custody of Lilo. Because, shockingly, letting your little sister hang out with a genetically unstable murder-plush does not score points with child protective services.

Big Sister Energy Hits Like a Truck

That said, it had been a while since I’d revisited the original. And maybe it’s the slow, creeping rot of adulthood setting in, but watching the live-action version now really shifts your perspective, especially when it comes to Nani.

In the animated version, you always knew she had it rough. But here, with Sydney Agudong’s performance front and centre, the weight she carries feels much heavier. Nani isn’t just the stressed-out sister figure—she’s a grieving kid thrust into the role of parent, juggling bills, bureaucrats, and a younger sibling who basically operates on Looney Tunes logic. And even with all of that, you can still see the love there. It’s not always soft and fuzzy—sometimes it’s clenched jaws and exhausted sighs—but it’s real.

You see it especially in Agudong’s eyes, in those moments where the possibility of Lilo being taken away hangs over her like a guillotine. And maybe it’s the fact we actually get a clear explanation for what happened to their parents this time around, but their absence stings. The film paints them as the kind of once-in-a-lifetime parents who’d never raise their voices, made perfect pancakes, and probably smelled like coconut oil and unconditional love. But they’re gone. And opposed to the values of ohana they were taught, they were the ones left behind. Lilo and Nani aren’t plucky cartoon characters anymore. They’re flesh-and-blood people, with problems you can’t just sing your way out of.

It’s here the live-action remake almost justifies its own existence. Almost. Because while the slapstick might fumble and the alien antics aren’t quite as charming in 4K, the emotional core? That still lands like a gut punch wrapped in a hula skirt.

One change I did genuinely appreciate—and I say this as someone who side-eyes most Disney remakes like they just offered me a soggy sandwich—is the ending.

Unlike the original, which left the door wide open for sequels, spin-offs, TV shows, and whatever that anime version of Stitch was, this live-action retelling is firmly a standalone. And honestly? That works in its favour.

A small sub-narrative weaved through the film involves Nani’s dreams of going to college to study marine biology—dreams that, in the chaos of aliens and social workers, felt quietly impossible. But by the end, in a bittersweet twist that somehow feels earned, Lilo is adopted by Tutu (yes, the one next door), while Nani heads off to chase the future she had to put on hold.

It’s a smart change. One that’s grounded, believable, and—dare I say—emotionally satisfying. It doesn’t overwrite the original’s message, but reframes it with a bit more maturity. A reminder that ohana doesn’t mean clinging desperately to the past, but growing, evolving, and letting go when the time comes.

Not quite a classic—but not a catastrophe either

So where does that leave us? This live-action Lilo & Stitch isn’t a disaster—not by a long shot. It’s heartfelt, competently made, and in moments, even beautiful. But it’s also a film caught between two worlds: the zany, emotionally layered brilliance of the original and the grounded, sometimes awkward reality of live-action filmmaking.

It doesn’t capture lightning in a bottle the way the 2002 version did, but it does manage to bottle something. A warm, if slightly diluted, echo of what made the original special. And in today’s sea of soulless remakes, that’s not nothing.

If the original was Elvis, this one’s a pretty decent tribute act. It’s not the same ride—but it’s still a ride worth taking, even if you occasionally feel the wheels wobble.

Final Score: 70/100

Lilo & Stitch premieres in Malaysian theatres on 22 May 2025.