My Favourite Movies: Lilo & Stitch

Despite being a serious lover of animation and having grown up with Disney (I mean who didn’t?) I am not a great lover of Disney films. I most probably enjoyed the classics and even watching them today you can still see the quality – dated though it is. But at some point I just switched off the whole thing. For one thing it was, and probably always had been, sickly sweet in a completely over-the-top fashion and then there were the songs. Every Disney film was basically a musical and I for one never really liked musicals or even movies with musical numbers in them. The idea that someone might burst into song is one thing but the idea that the whole cast would join in, with the inevitable dance routine, left me cold and frankly embarrassed – maybe it was a teenage thing?

So why have I picked Lilo & Stitch as one of my favourite movies? It certainly ticks most if not all of the usual Disney boxes: dysfunctional family [check], misunderstood child [check], an unfeeling or unsympathetic ‘system’ [check], a need for outside (dare I say heavenly) assistance to put things right [check] and lots of music [check], oh, and of course, a happy ending with hugs all round [big check]. One thing in this movies favour is that the musical numbers hardly ever turn into dance numbers. There’s a bit of dancing but it’s very much in context. The music, mostly Elvis which is hardly ever a bad thing, is either background music or played on vinyl (again in context) inside the movie so-to-speak so none of it broke up any of the action. Of course what really sold it for me was the character of Stitch himself (or itself as ‘he’s’ an alien – actually an artificial alien made in a lab with one purpose – destruction!). Escaping from detention (and probable dissection) he crash-lands on Earth, Hawaii to be exact, only to be adopted as a ‘dog’ by Lilo – the child hero – and her elder sister. Prevented from giving vent to his inbuilt destructive tendencies Stitch is forced to adapt to new circumstances and slowly, very slowly, learn the values of family Hawaiian-style. Meanwhile his evil-genius inventor and incompetent side-kick attempt to steal Stitch back with various degrees of mayhem ensuing in the process.

Despite being basically a warm-hearted family-friendly film it’s still a lot of fun (especially if you like Elvis Presley) and has some serious laugh-out-loud moments from when Stitch said ‘something’ supposedly in his defence at his trail that caused several of his judges to faint and one robot to throw up, to the fact that he took the only red runabout from the alien flagship to escape in, to Stitch building a model of San Francisco (when told to do something constructive) only to destroy it in a more than fair rendition of countless 50’s alien invasion films and more moments I will let you enjoy without any pre-emption from me. It’s light, it’s fluffy and its fun – so it might come as a surprise to some of you, but not to worry my next movie is a classic vampire flick.