Lilo & Stitch Review: A Live-Action Love Letter to Family

Morning sunlight drapes the Hawaiian shoreline in amber hues as a small girl navigates crowded cages at an animal shelter, eyes bright with longing. This opening tableau invites a story equal parts offbeat sci-fi and intimate family portrait. In Dean Fleischer Camp’s live-action reimagining, six-year-old Lilo (Maia Kealoha) mistakes an otherworldly creature for a lost puppy—and sparks a friendship that fractures galactic protocol and redefines home.

Chris Sanders returns as Stitch’s voice, lending familiar growls and warbles to an alien-engineered mischief-maker whose fur and form have been translated into photorealistic CGI. Opposite Kealoha, Sydney Elizabeth Agudong grounds the film as Nani, her sister and sole guardian, juggling a precarious job and the threat of separation under a watchful social-services gaze.

Screenwriters Chris Kekaniokalani Bright and Mike Van Wae weave new set pieces—bursting with portal guns and slapstick chase sequences—into the blueprint of a story first sketched in 2002. Warm island vistas collide with swift cuts through spaceship corridors, and the dialogue crackles with childlike wit even as it carries the weight of grief beneath. As part of Disney’s current slate of live-action adaptations, this version arrives May 23, 2025, aiming to fuse nostalgia and novelty in roughly 108 minutes of island magic.

Weaving Chaos into Kinship

Lilo emerges as a portrait of resilient loneliness, her sharp tongue and defiant posture shielding a child adrift without parental anchors. In early scenes, playground taunts and stern social-workers’ inquiries underscore her misfit status, each sideways glance revealing a girl teetering between rebellion and heartbreak. When she clutches a cage door at the animal shelter, that gesture—half plea, half dare—signals the vulnerability beneath her defiance, a grief carried in small, clenched fists rather than overt sobs.

Enter Stitch: a wild synth of sinew and programmed impulse, arriving amid galactic corridors with calculated mayhem. His first earthbound steps topple fruit stands and upend dinner tables, a carnival of CGI destruction that mirrors Lilo’s own internal turbulence. Yet, in moments of stillness—when he tilts his head at her whispered “Ohana” or hesitates at the edge of affection—an alien construct reveals nascent empathy. The creature’s metamorphosis hinges on these beats, as mischief surrenders to connection and raw energy channels toward protection.

Opposing these two is Nani, the axis of household strain. Her days fracture between minimum-wage shifts and guardianship hearings, her face a ledger of exhaustion and fierce devotion. Each paycheck deposited and each reprimanding glance from a social worker layers weight onto her shoulders. Still, in shared glances with Lilo—over hastily prepared sandwiches or late-night repairing of shattered glass—Nani’s hardened resolve softens into understanding, acknowledging that sisterhood demands adaptive strength.

Around this core, Jumba and Pleakley tumble through Hawaiian streets as mismatched tourists, their absurd attempts at cultural mimicry providing sharp comedic relief. Cobra Bubbles, reframed here as a bureaucratic sentinel, looms with clipped authority, balancing empathy and enforcement in equal measure. Neighborly figures and David, the surfer confidant, anchor Lilo and Nani to island life, their presence reminding both sisters that community transcends bloodline. Each character arc threads chaos into compassion, sculpting a family portrait that extends far beyond DNA.

Brushstrokes of Island Light

Sunlight spills across volcanic cliffs and coconut palms, each frame feeling less like a backdrop and more like a living canvas. The production opts for real shorelines and verdant ridges over constructed sets, inviting the camera to roam freely through cascading waves and misty valleys. Soft, watercolor-soft lighting bathes every scene in golden warmth, as if the lens itself has been infused with aloha spirit.

Stitch’s arrival poses a keen challenge: embedding a CGI creature within these organic spaces without fracturing illusion. His scale remains faithful to animated lore, fur rendered with painstaking detail—each strand catching sunbeams or shadow with lifelike shimmer. His eyes, tiny galaxies of mischief and confusion, register surprise in subtle flares. When he hurtles through green-screen sequences, the choreography between digital body and physical environment yields moments of unexpected levity, as his four-armed sprints kick up real-world dust and tumble chairs askew.

Camera movement mirrors emotional currents. In sisterly exchanges, handheld lenses hover close, capturing Lilo’s hesitant smiles and Nani’s weary yet unbreakable gaze. These intimate shots contrast sharply with kinetic editing in chase sequences, where brisk cuts and off-kilter angles heighten breathless urgency. Alien ship interiors dissolve into Hawaiian sunsets with a rhythm that feels both abrupt and exhilarating.

Visual motifs season the narrative like sea salt. The word “Ohana” appears etched on wooden signs and embroidered on cushions, its presence a constant reminder of family as refuge. Meanwhile, the warmth of the family home—its rounded doorframes and sunlit kitchen—stands in stark relief against the cold steel corridors of interstellar craft. Such juxtapositions underscore the film’s core paradox: a story of heart and home set against the vastness of space.

Balancing Mayhem and Melancholy

Dean Fleischer Camp navigates a tautrope of chaos and calm, allowing one moment of slapstick to collapse seamlessly into a pause of heartfelt silence. A runaway shopping cart careens through a market stall, sending papayas airborne, only to cut moments later to Lilo’s silent tears as she clutches a torn photograph of her parents. These oscillations create a rhythm that feels alive, though the 108-minute runtime occasionally stumbles, as lengthy portal-gun chases stretch thin before reigniting with crisp comedic tension.

Dialogue crackles with authenticity. Kealoha’s wisecracks land with sudden clarity—a six-year-old wielding humor like armor—while Stitch’s physical comedy needs no words. A tilt of his head or a twitch of his ears becomes a punchline, demonstrating that humor can thrive even in the absence of speech. This interplay of verbal wit and animated nuance underpins the film’s lighter pulses without ever undercutting its deeper resonance.

The screenplay honors key beats of the 2002 original, threading beloved scenes almost frame by frame, yet it refuses to be mere mimicry. New material—most notably the portal-gun sequence—injects genuine surprise. Watching Lilo and Stitch tumble through converging doorways, slipping from sandy shores into starship halls and back, feels fresh, its cascading momentum underscoring the siblings’ journey toward unity.

Emotion springs from subtle direction. Grief manifests in small gestures: Nani’s knuckles whitening as she juggles rent checks, Lilo’s quivering smile when Stitch finally grasps the meaning of “Ohana.” A wordless scene, where both sisters perch on a rooftop as distant thunder rolls, reveals more about their bond than any monologue could. In these exchanges, Camp’s camera listens rather than dictates, elevating ordinary moments into resonant revelations.

Echoes of Island Melody

Music and sound meld into the film’s heartbeat, beginning with “Hawaiian Rollercoaster Ride” surfacing over a sunlit montage of Lilo racing her sand-splashed tricycle. Elvis-inflected covers punctuate pivotal moments—Stitch’s first tentative hug, Nani’s weary relief—each note evoking nostalgia for 2002 while threading new emotional seams. These tracks don’t merely accompany images; they amplify memory and longing.

Ambient audio serves as a counterpoint to sci-fi exuberance. Gentle ocean waves lap against shorelines as distant birdcalls weave through dialogue, reminding listeners that this tale unfolds in a living ecosystem. When Stitch erupts into mayhem, his uproar blends with rustling palm fronds and the underwater hum of reef life, sound levels sculpted to ensure chaos never drowns out the world that birthed him.

Voice performances anchor human and alien alike. Kealoha’s delivery carries crisp precision—each line delivered with buoyant timing, whether she’s chastising a neighbor or pleading for family unity. Sanders slips back into Stitch’s expressive grunts and coos, those signature vocal tics translated into fuller textures by modern audio work. His growls crackle with untamed energy, then soften into warmth when empathy takes hold. Together, these elements forge an auditory landscape as rich and layered as the film’s visual palette.

The Gravity of ‘Ohana’

Family emerges as both refuge and frontier, with “Ohana means family” reverberating like a carved mantra through pivotal moments. That simple phrase transforms a rickety beach shack into a fortress of belonging, standing in stark relief against the cold precision of starship corridors. On Earth, kinship anchors Lilo and Nani; in space, Stitch’s creator Jumba regards him as a mere experiment. This gulf underscores the film’s central tension: home is defined by care, not code.

Grief and resilience entwine in each character’s arc. Lilo’s small, clenched gestures—bruised knuckles from a failed science project, a sideways glance at her empty bedroom—speak volumes about a child channeling sorrow through defiance. Stitch’s initial rampages mirror programmed aggression, each smashed vase echoing his engineered impulse to destroy. Yet as those impulses yield to protection—when Stitch shields Lilo from a collapsing shelf—found kinship blooms amid ruin.

Hawaiian culture courses through the narrative like island trade winds. Language, dance and shared meals thread authenticity into every scene: chanting at luaus, communal ukulele strums, and the respectful exchange of “aloha” and “mahalo.” These cultural markers resist superficial exoticism, weaving tradition into the fabric of daily life rather than framing it as scenic ornament.

Yet the remake cannot escape its corporate lineage. Moments of fresh insight—a portal-gun chase that feels genuinely inventive—sit alongside near-literal recreations of animated set pieces. The balance shifts unpredictably: sometimes nostalgia fuels emotional clarity, other times familiarity flattens curiosity. In this tension between remix and reinterpretation, the film challenges viewers to ask: when does homage enrich, and when does it simply repeat?

Echoes Beyond the Shore

Disney’s Lilo & Stitch began its journey in 2002 as a singular take on family and belonging, spawning toys, spin-offs and a devoted fan base that stretches into theme-park plushes and fashion prints. This live-action iteration taps into that legacy, placing photorealistic Stitch alongside an earnest new Lilo to capture children discovering these characters for the first time. Merchandise shelves will fill once more, demonstrating the story’s capacity to endure across generations.

Within Disney’s wave of hand-drawn classics reimagined in live action, this film reveals both promise and peril. Real-world textures and natural light grant depth to animated designs, letting island waves and palm fronds hold equal weight to CGI fur.

Yet when expressiveness yields to realism—when exaggerated gestures soften into subtle animal tics—the vibrant physicality of traditional animation feels tempered. Such tensions remind viewers that every adaptation must reckon with what gains clarity and what sacrifices whimsy.

The film is scheduled for theatrical release in the United States on May 23, 2025, by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

Full Credits

Director: Dean Fleischer Camp

Writers: Chris Kekaniokalani Bright, Mike Van Waes

Producers: Jonathan Eirich, Dan Lin

Cast: Maia Kealoha (Lilo), Sydney Elizebeth Agudong (Nani), Chris Sanders (voice of Stitch), Zach Galifianakis (Dr. Jumba Jookiba), Billy Magnussen (Agent Pleakley), Courtney B. Vance (Cobra Bubbles), Tia Carrere (Mrs. Kekoa), Amy Hill (Tūtū), Kaipo Dudoit (David), Hannah Waddingham (Grand Councilwoman)

Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Nigel Bluck

Editors: Phillip J. Bartell, Adam Gerstel

Composer: Dan Romer