Lilo & Stitch (2002)
Directed by Dean DeBlois
As Stitch, a runaway genetic experiment from a faraway planet, wreaks havoc on the Hawaiian Islands, he becomes the mischievous adopted alien "puppy" of an independent little girl named Lilo and learns about loyalty, friendship, and ʻohana, the Hawaiian tradition of family.
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What critics say influenced Lilo & Stitch
For the first time in about 60 years, watercolors are used for the background animation, giving the movie a throwback feel of classic Disney films like "Dumbo" and "Snow White."
It is written and directed by relative newcomers Dean Deblois and Chris Sanders (Sanders himself essays the voice of Stitch), who have notably chosen to use watercolor background paintings, a medium not used in a Disney feature since Dumbo (1941), adding, for better or worse, an old-fashioned touch to the film's overall look.
Instead, the use of watercolor scenery, a style that hasn't been used in the 60 years since "Dumbo," "Pinocchio," "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and "Bambi," gives "Lilo & Stitch" a more folksy feel for its futuristic story line.
Sophisticated, expert animation, attractive pastel colors, and the relentless Disney hype machine can’t disguise the fact that this shameless animated ripoff of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is the worst-ever Disney animated feature (yes, even worse than The Black Cauldron).
Directors Dean Deblois and Chris Sanders (who also wrote the script and supplies the voice of Stitch) combine elements of Frankenstein, Home Alone, and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in this story of a lonely child and her extraterrestrial friend yearning for a nuclear family.
From its space politics, where Grand Councilwoman (Zoe Caldwell, "The Purple Rose of Cairo") sentences based on an individual's worth to society, to its themes of broken homes forming wide-reaching families, "Lilo & Stitch" has something for everyone.
Kevin McDonald ("The Ladies Man," "Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy"), Zoe Caldwell ("The Purple Rose of Cairo") and Jason Scott Lee ("Soldier," "Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story") round out the other major characters and all do fine work.
This time the voices are less recognizable, by Lauren Holly, Michael Chiklis and Daveigh Chase, the voice of the little Hawaiian girl in "Lilo & Stitch."
"Spirited Away" features traditional animation combined with computer-generated effects, which is not particularly unusual; "Treasure Planet," "Lilo & Stitch" and "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron" also mixed mediums.
Disney executives, knowing a good animated thing even when they don't make it, bought the worldwide rights to "Spirited Away" and refitted it with an English script and a new voice cast that includes such American actors as Suzanne Pleshette, David Ogden Stiers and Daveigh Chase, last heard as Lilo in Disney's "Lilo & Stitch.
River gods, dragons, radish spirits, flying oragami birds, rolling, muttering decapitated heads, twin witches, and spirits of all imaginable shapes and sizes roam the countryside of a mystical landscape into which a young modern-day girl named Chihiro (Daveigh Chase, Lilo & Stitch ) stumbles when her cloddish parents take a wrong turn on their way to their new house.
The fun begins when 10 year-old Chihiro (voiced by Daveigh Chase, of Lilo & Stitch) and her parents pack all their belongings into their car and hit the road for a new town and a new home.
Chihiro (convincingly voiced in the English dub by Daveigh Chase, who was similarly remarkable as Lilo in Lilo & Stitch) comes across as plucky but authentically childlike as she faces down a crowded, jangling, wildly variegated horde of frog-men, river-dragons, nameless ooze-beasts, radish-giants, and, above all, the witch Yubaba (Suzanne Pleshette), a huge-headed, bejeweled monstrosity who steals names and memories.
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Yet where those films gave us little or no insight into the unguessed science-fiction worlds from which their alien beings came, Lilo & Stitch ushers us into a whimsical, colorful science-fiction world, with spacecraft dogfights, alien technology, and imaginative creature design — a world that comes off like Men in Black by way of Osmosis Jones.
"Men in Black"-esque social worker Cobra Bubbles (Ving Rhames), given to saying such things as "You've been adrift in the sheltered harbor of my patience," is threatening to split the family.
There's a touch of "Men in Black," too, with a man in black (Ving Rhames) who is a social worker, and of course the numerous other Disney films that have involved partial families and social outcasts.
This all takes place against a cheerful background of pop-culture references, including scenes spoofing "Men in Black," " Jaws " and " Godzilla " (with Stitch first building a model of San Francisco, then destroying it).
Directors Dean Deblois and Chris Sanders (who also wrote the script and supplies the voice of Stitch) combine elements of Frankenstein, Home Alone, and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in this story of a lonely child and her extraterrestrial friend yearning for a nuclear family.
Like the far larger protagonist of The Iron Giant , Stitch is essentially an outer-space weapon — but unlike Iron Giant, Stitch knows from the outset what he is, and has no interest in being anything else.
Reducing focus on the alien angle distinguishes the story from its obvious predecessors E.T. and The Iron Giant.
It certainly didn't cause me to expect much from it beyond what looked to be a kid-based cartoon with an apparently annoying space creature and a sappy plot ripped off from "E.T." and/or "The Iron Giant."
If you have seen the exemplary 1999 film "The Iron Giant," you will be reminded of it many times here.
Experiment 626 knows that his creator, Jumba (David Ogden Stiers, "Beauty and the Beast"), and one-eyed earth specialist Pleakley (Kevin McDonald, "The Kids in the Hall") are hot on his trail, so he retracts two of his six legs and his antennae to masquerade as the affectionate pet he spies on a shelter poster.
Andreas Deja, who was the supervising animator for Gaston in "Beauty and the Beast" and Jafar in "Aladdin," takes on the recalcitrant Lilo, and Alex Kuperschmidt, responsible for the hyenas in "The Lion King," makes the jabbering Stitch (grumbles and rumbles voiced by writer-director Sanders) remarkably expressive.
As a straight animation piece it deserves at least a passing grade; it's not in the same league with the likes of Beauty And The Beast or Aladdin, but it's much better than, say, last year's Atlantis: The Lost Empire .
Beyond Disney cartoon regular David Ogden Stiers ("Atlantis: The Lost Empire," "Beauty and the Beast") and the recognizable voice of Ving Rhames ("Mission: Impossible II," "Out of Sight"), the rest of the vocal talent isn't easy to identify.
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Kevin McDonald ("The Ladies Man," "Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy"), Zoe Caldwell ("The Purple Rose of Cairo") and Jason Scott Lee ("Soldier," "Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story") round out the other major characters and all do fine work.
As Nani despairs over her difficult charge, the two engage in an all out shouting match just in time to be witnessed by Cobra Bubbles (Ving Rhames, "Pulp Fiction"), the new massive, dark suited, intimidating social worker who gives Nani three days to get her act together.