Disney’s live-action Lilo & Stitch sells some of the original’s soul to be the cutest of them all

Disney’s live-action remake of Lilo & Stitch is yet another theme park photo-realistic shadow of the original classic. Director Dean Fleischer Camp (Marcel the Shell With Shoes On) delivers a film that’s equal parts heartfelt homage and corporate-sanitized nostalgia bait, stitching (pun intended) together moments of genuine warmth with baffling missteps.

Maia Kealoha as Lilo is a revelation. The seven-year-old newcomer captures the character’s scrappy charm, balancing mischief, wittiness and melancholy with a rawness and sweetness that cuts through all the CGI slop. Her scenes with Chris Sanders’ Stitch, still growling in that iconic Tasmanian devil-meets-Elvis purr, create a synergy of cuteness that nearly justify this remake’s existence. When Lilo tearfully declares “‘ohana means family,” you still feel that lump in your throat you felt in the original, but in this case all those heartfelt moments aren’t earned, and get undercut with lazy jokes that rarely land.

The problems arise when Disney’s remake machine kicks into autopilot. At 1 hour and 48 minutes (23 minutes longer than the original), the film somehow feels rushed, blitzing through iconic moments like Lilo’s hula expulsion and her walk home, or Stitch’s destructive spaghetti dinner. Gone are the quiet, haunting beats that gave the 2002 film its soul: no Ugly Duckling metaphor, no Stitch whispering “I’m lost” alone in the woods. Instead, we get a CGI Stitch crashing a wedding and smashing a wedding cake to Bruno Mars’s “Uptown Funk” and human actors that look and act more cartoony than the ones in the original animation.

Then there’s the Dr. Jumba and Pleakley comic relief catastrophe. Zach Galifianakis sleepwalks through Dr. Jumba’s mad scientist schtick like a hungover college professor. Billy Magnussen’s Pleakley emerges as the (relatively) funnier half of this tragic pair, which says more about Galifianakis’s comedic coma than Magnussen’s actual chops and lack of real funny script opportunities. Now both shapeshifting aliens (instead of the original’s clever aliens-in-disguise) are reduced to humans posing as Hawaiian-shirted bimbo tourists, landing barely any attempts at a joke. Their human disguises drain every ounce of the original’s absurd charm; watching them bumble through Kaua’i feels less like intergalactic chaos and more like a bad version of Vincent D’Onofrio’s Men in Black bug-monster starring in a rejected spin-off, with all the awkwardness but none of the budget. You can practically see the spreadsheet where Disney saved money by limiting their alien forms’ screen time.

One of the film’s biggest sins is erasing Captain Gantu, the hulking galactic enforcer who raised the stakes in the last act of the original film. Director Fleischer Camp (in an interview with People) claims the character “didn’t work in live-action,” but let’s be real: This was clearly a studio committee decision to prioritize cuddly merch moments over actual tension and to save some money on having another digital creature in the film. The climactic showdown lacks any real weight, devolving into generic CGI chaos that makes you long for the original’s hand-drawn intensity. Tia Carrere’s return as social worker Mrs. Kekoa is just pure fan service that didn’t do much for me.

Amid Disney’s formulaic remake machinery, Sydney Agudong’s performance as Nani manages to feel surprisingly human. She’s not just playing the overworked big sister archetype — there’s some texture to how she balances weariness with fierce protectiveness. Though she never sparkles quite as brightly as Maia Kealoha’s effortlessly charismatic Lilo, Agudong finds quiet power in the small moments: a tired smile after a long shift, the way her voice breaks when scolding Stitch, those fleeting instances where her love for Lilo shines through the exhaustion.

The new surfing subplot delivers unexpected joy, especially thanks to the six-year-old French bulldog Dale. The dog stole my heart showing off his skills in his acting and surfing debut in a scene where Stitch, seeing Dale’s majestic surfing, wants to try it out himself. Watching Stitch’s wide-eyed wonder at Dale’s aquatic skills almost makes you forgive the screenplay’s bigger sins. Almost. Because while we get this surfing tangent and Nani’s tacked-on marine biology aspirations, the film still robs us of the original’s poignant ‘lost ugly duckling’ metaphor that gave Stitch’s arc its soul.

Lilo & Stitch 2025 isn’t Disney’s worst remake — it’s exactly what we’ve come to expect from their billion-dollar IP printing machine: a theme park ride with just enough moments of magic to satisfy families worldwide. But like every Disney live-action remake before it, this one sacrifices lasting artistic resonance for a temporary spectacle of instant gratification profit. And like Stitch himself, this remake is torn between destruction and devotion — between honouring its source and serving corporate mandates. When the credits rolled, I didn’t laugh or cry. I just sighed and wondered: When will Disney learn that ‘nobody gets left behind’ shouldn’t only apply to shareholders and their profit margins? ■

Lilo & Stitch is now playing screening in Montreal theatres.

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