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Disney have had a mixed year with their live action remakes. Snow White bombed at the box office which lead to the immediate shutting down of a number of similar movies that were in production. Then Lilo & Stitch was released and totally made bank, probably making the studios wonder if they should be starting them up again. The film, which has just started streaming, gathered a worldwide cinema take of $1,035,963,992 and is currently the second most commercially successful film of the year. I don’t know which of those cancelled projects are now being reconsidered but if we do get to see the new version of Tangled then that might be both its title and the best word to describe its journey to the screen. 

What remains consistent is the utter pointlessness of this ongoing project to update the bulk of their animated back catalogue. They have now redone eighteen of their classic cartoon features in the way, twenty if you include The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Cruella, and most of them have been deeply inferior to the movies they followed. Of course the point is the money so after Lilo & Stitch’s reception we won’t see the desired end to this that Snow White briefly promised. At least we might see them become a little more selective. 

Lilo & Stitch is not a terrible film. Some of the cast are strong, particularly seven year old Maia Kealoha in the title role. Also the 2002 original was full of such good ideas and many of these have carried over. They’re not new ideas though and the whole thing feels once again like a poor cover version. The movies in this series that have most worked are the ones that have been bold enough to make big changes, like Maleficent, Christopher Robin and the aforementioned Cruella, and even some of the others have begun to justify their existence by removing and modifying some of the outdated ideas around race and sexism that existed in the originals. In the case of Lilo & Stitch though every change is to its detriment. The new ideas it does have are just bad ones. 

The worst of these surround Jumba and Pleakly who have none of the charm the exhibited in the original film. They are also in human form for most of the time which is presumably so that they can convincingly blend in this live action setting. This wasn’t an issue when they were moving around in a cartoon world which only highlights how this whole thing was better suited to that medium. It obviously saves money on the CGI too but again, if you can’t afford to do it properly don’t do it. When we do see them in their true alien guise Jumba’s voice is totally wrong too but this is nothing compared to his new characterisation which will be totally wrong for fans of the first film and just uneven for everyone else. They have conflated his character with another (visually expensive) one and it doesn’t work. So essentially the voice doesn’t work when he’s Jumba but he’s not Jumba most of the time and even when he is Jumba he’s not Jumba. 

The very end has caused particular consternation in my house as well. Let’s just say that ohana doesn’t quite mean what it used to. 

Apparently Moana is next then and I don’t have high hopes. That is a movie, which not yet being ten years old, definitely does not need updating. Whether it will be another Snow White or a Lilo & Stitch remains to be seen but artistically at least, neither would be a good outcome. 

There’s a line in the original where Lilo tells Stitch, ‘You wreck everything you touch. Why don’t you try to make something new for a change?’ There’s a message for the studio there but apparently they’re not hearing it.