Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Adorable, 11 Jan 2008
Lilo & Stich is such a lovely film! It tells the highly original story of a little Hawaiian girl who is orphaned encountering an experimental creature from outerspace and quickly befriending it. The animation is exquisite and the voice cast are on top form throughout both the comedic and adventurous elements of the story. The music is magnificent and very fitting to the film as most of it is Hawaiian influenced and features Hawaiian singers and instruments. An excellent if often overlooked Disney film that will touch your heart and also leave you with a smile on your face by the end.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unanticipated Forgotten Object crash lands in later Disney canon. Is actually good., 11 Dec 2007
After months of dust-collecting, I finally got round to watching Lilo & Stitch, a film reputed as the 'best of the rest' in the lesser-known corners of Disney's feature animation output. Whilst a reasonable financial success in 2002, and a big-name franchise for a modern Disney thought by many to be going steadily downhill, the film nevertheless passed many by and continues to do so. As a 2D feature, it lost the academy award to the brilliant 'Spirited Away', and lost many an audience member to a climate that was increasingly hostile towards 2D animation at the peak of Pixar and Dreamworks' success. As such it passed many by, and continues to do so.
Inevitably, this is unfair and Lilo & Stitch fully certainly deserves its reputation as the best of Disney's recent output, perhaps even as the best Disney movie since The Lion King. This is because Lilo & Stitch isn't as much about Stitch's causing havoc (though the 'Aladdin' level of humour/mayhem in this is certainly welcome, and consistently punchy) as it is about the family unit that forms around Stitch, Lilo and older sister / mother substitute Nani. Despite being pivotal I didn't know this family conflict was in the film when I sat down to watch it, and it surprised me with how emotionally engaging it was, ensuring that I was weepy one minute, laughing the next, a maturely managed roller-coaster of emotion.
Along with the beautiful Hawaiian setting, when marketing for the original film, Disney has downplayed this family theme and highlighted Stitch as a sort of alien Bart Simpson, a whirlwind of havoc with full "BOLD ITALIC UNDERLINE ALL-CAPS!" surf-boarding radicalness. Yawn. Disney originally created an interesting marketing campaign in which Stitch was seen as the antithesis to Disney classics like The Little Mermaid and The Lion King, but (clever as their alternate re-tellings of classic Disney moments were) after years of unsuccessful Disney productions they just served to cement the fact that Disney had changed to something unrecognisable.
And true, the film isn't a big-budget ani-musical and its Science Fiction setting basically a first in the Disney Animated Features Canon, but at its core is a sentimental and commendable message worth far more than the 'Saturday Morning Cartoon' treatment that Disney gave to Lilo and Stitch's promotional period. But of course, Disney weren't quite finished: because it DID become a Saturday Morning Cartoon, and it was subjected to as many Cheapquels as every other half successful Disney feature of the last 70 years and then some (and predictably, Stitch is the main focus of these stories, in full BOLD ITALIC UNDERLINE ALL-CAPS! glory). A shame that a decent idea should be recycled endlessly in this way, but frankly that's just the way Disney has been in this decade, and looks to remain if John Lasseter fails to turn them around...
So what of this 2-Disc DVD edition of Disney Animation's only 21st Century triumph? In a rare reversal of the norm, this 2-Disk edition has never seen a release in the US which is a shame for stateside Disney fans, because the second disk is great! So long as you don't expect impartiality (Disney documentaries typically make Chinese versions of 'What really happened at Tienanmen' look like a tear-drenched confession) you're in for a treat. The first disc contains the standard Disney DVD knick-knacks aimed primarily at kids: silly DVD games, a Disney-pedia feature on Hawaii and the obligatory inharmonious holocaust of some song or other by Disney's favourite regiment of audio assassins (The Mouseketeers aren't so called because their spiritual leader is a small, trouser wearing rodent, they've earned the name by violently filling DVD extras with enough cheese to stink out Cheddar gorge). There is an audio commentary which I haven't got round to hearing yet, but the second disk alone is enough for me to give a recommendation. Cleverly segmented into parts with optional 'footnotes' as you go along, the second disk is a comprehensive making-of adequately supplemented by material that all too often gets left off the disk despite being discussed in the documentary: complete deleted scenes, production sketches and scene / concept pitches are present. Particularly interesting are interviews with animation idols responsible for backgrounds in the first four Disney features, presented as supplements to detailed accounts of Lilo & Stitch's early development and unconventional use of watercolour backgrounds. The hours of content on these discs manage to put some of the more recent 'Platinum' editions to shame and are highly commendable.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Adorable and charming Disney film <3 , 5 Aug 2008
This is my favourite Disney film, and in my opinion was the last great Disney animated masterpiece. The storyline might sound weird at first but it's very cute really, and the "Ohana" message throughout the film is really sweet and true. Nobody gets left behind or forgotten. The animation is wonderful (especially the watercolour backgrounds <3), the characters loveable and the music is just...perfect!
This is a must-have to your Disney DVD collection! =D
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