You Ain’t Nothin’ but a Hound Dog
Directed by Dean Fleischer Camp
Starring Maia Kealoha, Chris Sanders, Sydney Elizebeth Agudong
Released May 23rd, 2025
Rated PG
Released in 2002 between Disney’s adventure films Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet, directors Chris Sanders and Dean Deblois’ Lilo & Stitch featured an inspired marketing campaign in which Stitch, a destructive blue alien, caused chaos across the Disney universe, eliciting shocks from legacy characters such as Belle from Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid’s Ariel. For director Dean Fleischer Camp’s live-action remake, Disney has smartly recreated this ad campaign with newer characters such as the Kakamora from Moana, with similarly fun results.
The story in both versions involves an alien experiment escaping a lab, crash landing on Earth, and becoming intertwined with orphaned sisters Lilo and Nani, who are trying to keep their family together in the face of pressure from the Government. Meanwhile more aliens have been dispatched to our planet to track down the fugitive alien. It is nice to see Amy Hill, Tia Carrere, and Jason Scott Lee pop up in this movie, as they all appeared in the original. Lilo’s original voice actress Daveigh Chase is not present.
You will hear the music of Elvis Presley, you will see the sights of Hawaii, you will recognize some of the same gags and story beats, yet this live-action adaptation of 2002’s animated Lilo & Stitch simply does not have the heart and soul of the original. That film’s beautiful hand-drawn animation is replaced in this film with garish CGI, and its affecting message of family above all else is gutted in the third act. Characters that have become beloved over the last twenty-plus years are confusingly handled by Chris Kekaniokalani Bright and Mike Van Wae’s screenplay. Ohana, erased.
There are two bright spots in the film. One is composer Dan Romer’s inventive and rousing score, and the other is Sydney Elizebeth Agudong’s performance as Lilo’s older sister Nani. She’s a pitch perfect Nani, even though the ending betrays her character. I have no desire to be cruel to a young actor, so I will be as kind as possible when discussing Maia Kealoha’s performance as Lilo. It is not a good performance. Maia has trouble enunciating, and so many of her lines appear to have been added through ADR. I have no doubt that Maia has potential to become an accomplished performer. She is not there yet, and it negatively impacts the film. The other titular character is once again voiced by Chris Sanders, helping to make the computer-generated blue alien somewhat believable. The effects are alright, but nowhere near as impressive as the puppetry used in the recent children’s creature feature The Legend of Ochi. I guess it hardly matters.
People love Stitch. The character is one of the biggest merchandise sellers for the House of Mouse. It’s all but inevitable that this flick will get a sequel, most likely with fan-favorite characters like Leroy and Angel. Had this film done a good job with the characters, story and effects, I might have been excited for a follow up. As it stands. I doubt I’d watch any sequels, and I do not see myself revisiting this movie anytime soon. It’s bad enough that Billy Magnusson’s Pleakley never wears a dress, and that the intergalactic shark enforcer Captain Gantu is nowhere to be found. But worst of all, they ruined my boy Jumba. Played here by Zack Galifianakis, Jumba’s distinctive accent is gone, his body looks all wrong, and he’s inexplicably made into a villain. This isn’t the Jumba we know and love. Justice for Jumba!