Lilo & Stitch

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Lilo & Stitch
Promotional Poster for Lilo & Stitch
Directed by	Dean DeBlois Chris Sanders
Produced by	Clark Spencer
Written by	Dean DeBlois Chris Sanders
Starring	Daveigh Chase Chris Sanders Tia Carrere Kevin McDonald
Distributed by	Walt Disney Pictures
Release date(s)	June 21, 2002
Running time	85 minutes
Language	English
Budget	$80,000,000
Preceded by	Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)
Followed by	Treasure Planet (2002)
IMDb profile

For the television series, see Lilo & Stitch: The Series

Lilo & Stitch is an Academy Award nominated film in the Disney animated features canon. The film was produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation, written and directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois and released by Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Distribution on June 21, 2002. Lilo & Stitch was also the second of three Disney animated features produced primarily at its animation studio at Disney-MGM Studios in Orlando, Florida. The film was rated PG for mild sci-fi action.

1 Plot
2 Production and promotion
3 Parodies and references
4 Setting
5 Soundtrack
6 Box office, spin-offs and sequels
7 See also
8 References
9 External links

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

An extra-terrestrial mad scientist named Dr. Jumba Jookiba (voiced by David Ogden Stiers) is imprisoned for illegally experimenting and creating creatures to cause chaos and destruction. His latest experiment is Number 626: a cute, little, blue alien who is deceptively strong, fast, intelligent, destructive and indestructable. During Jumba's trial, the Grand Councilwoman tried to reason with 626. Its only response was an apparently vulgar "meega na la kweesta", which caused the council to gasp and shudder in shock. Jumba quickly protested, "I didn't teach him that!"

On his way to a penal colony, 626 escapes and crash lands on the small Hawaiian island of Kauaʻi, on Earth. Masquerading as a dog (but looking more like a koala), 626 is adopted by a little girl named Lilo Pelekai (voiced by Daveigh Chase) who is living with her 19/20 year-old sister Nani (voiced by Tia Carrere) after their parents died in a car accident. Lilo is lonely and a bit of an outcast until she finds a new friend in 626, whom she names "Stitch" (voiced by Chris Sanders). She treasures a doll (which she made herself) named Scrump and a photo of her family.

Lilo tries to teach Stitch to behave using Elvis Presley and his music as a model for good behavior. Despite Lilo's somewhat successful attempts to modify Stitch's behavior, his destructive tendencies make life difficult for everyone, especially Nani. Since they are constantly being monitored by a social worker, former Central Intelligence Agent and currently interplanetary diplomat Cobra Bubbles (voiced by Ving Rhames), Lilo is at risk of being placed in foster care if their living conditions do not improve. Nani is attempting to provide a stable home environment for Lilo by finding steady employment.

Making matters even more difficult for Lilo and Nani are Jumba and Galactic Agent Pleakley (voiced by Kevin McDonald) attempts to capture Stitch. After their failure and subsequent dismissal, a shark-like alien named Captain Gantu (voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson) is assigned to capture Stitch.

Eventually, Stitch runs rings around Gantu, laughing all the way. The Grand Councilwoman appears on the beach and would arrest Stitch, but becomes reluctant to do so when she sees that he has reformed. Lilo, prodded by Cobra Bubbles, presents her certificate of adoption which makes her Stitch's owner, causing the Grand Councilwoman to release the little creature. Stitch's sentence to exile provides a loophole; he is now in Lilo and Nani's care.

Throughout the movie, the message provided tells the audience that family must stick together in all cases, however difficult. It also stresses the importance of Lilo and Nani's Hawaiian culture and how it must be kept alive. Furthermore, it is also meant to remind children of the importance of good behavior as well as adults that not all children are "rotten to the core", and that every child has some goodness deep inside.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Production and promotion

Disney Adventures originally ran comics predating the movie, and gave a little information on Lilo's character and Stitch's history. However, some differences exist. Myrtle Edmonds was either mistakenly called Jenny or renamed from Jenny during the film's production. Experiment 625 was exactly in the comics as he was in the subsequent television series, with the exception of the fur color.

In the comics, the experiments were completely harmless and bore little/no resemblance to Stitch. In comics created after the series, new experiments were added but not numbered to lessen the chance of continuity mistakes. Check to see the List of Experiments

Some of the film's promotional posters were lenticular. One image had Stitch in his dog form (that is, with two arms for a total of four limbs), the other had Stitch in his experiment form (that is, with four arms for a total of six limbs).

Lilo & Stitch is one of the few animated feature films to use watercolor paintings for its backgrounds, and the first Disney film to use them since Dumbo in 1941. There is even a poster for Dumbo in a character's room as a reference to this. Due to the production schedules, which have continuously tightened since Dumbo, watercolors were risky; one wrong stroke could ruin a piece, and with some 1,200 backgrounds for this movie, there was no time available to waste. Opaque gouache and acrylic paint, the current industry standards, are much more forgiving than watercolor because they let an artist paint over his mistakes. Using watercolors, the Disney artists had to carefully plan a background before they began working on it so as to avoid mistakes. Sanders and the studio's Backgrounds Department searched for easier ways to get the bright look, but finally decided that traditional watercolors were the proper way to go, and had the Orlando crew trained in the technique.

The original plan for the ending of Lilo & Stitch was completely changed due to the September 11, 2001 attacks. [1] [2] The original ending featured Stitch stealing a 747 then joyriding among the office and hotel towers of Honolulu; the revised ending uses a spaceship racing through clouds and through a tight valley with Dr. Jumba (the gradually friendlier mad scientist) at the controls while Stitch steals a full tanker truck and rides it down the crater of a volcano. This original un-edited version is set to be included on the upcoming special edition DVD release.

Having endured a pair of increasingly large box office disappointments with its previous films (The Emperor's New Groove and Atlantis: The Lost Empire) Disney decided to pull out all the stops in advertising Lilo and Stich, by drawing on its stable of beloved characters from past hit films. For the first time, characters from prior films were featured prominently in ads and even on the movie poster, even though none of them appear in the film. This approach not only helped promote the new movie, it also reminded viewers of Disney's past successes, at a time when audiences and insiders were beginning to lose faith in the studio.

[edit] Parodies and references

A 1985 concept sketch of Stitch by creator Chris Sanders.

The teaser trailers for this film parody trailers for other recent Disney films such as Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and The Lion King (two of these were animated by Sanders). They begin with actual scenes from the movies they parody, until Stitch comes in and disrupts the action. These are called "Inter-Stitch-als" and are featured on Disney's official site. The Little Mermaid trailer was the most difficult to parody, as it wasn't animated in the CAPS system and had to be cleaned up by hand. The original actors were brought back to reprise their roles and were shocked when asked to act negatively towards Stitch. Each trailer ended with the original characters telling Stitch to "Get your own movie."

Social Worker Cobra Bubbles, formerly of the CIA, is obviously one of the mysterious "Men in Black" (of urban legends and a couple of hit movies) who work to prevent an alien takeover of Earth and to persuade humans that aliens do not exist.

When Lilo first meets Cobra Bubbles, she looks at his imposing stature and asks him if he's ever killed anyone. Cobra deflects the question by muttering in response, "We're getting off the subject." Cobra Bubbles was voiced by Ving Rhames, who famously played ruthless mob boss Marcellus Wallace in the 1994 film Pulp Fiction, where he ordered the death of (or was directly involved in the killing of) many characters.

Some of the aliens on the Federation spaceship bear resemblances to classic Disney characters, including Piglet and Tigger from the Winnie the Pooh series of films and television programs. Agent Pleakley, for instance, appears to have been patterned after the walking brooms from the Fantasia sequence, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." Others resemble Earth animals, such as the Grand Councilwoman, who resembles a kind of Hadrosaur, Stitch's "warden", who looks like a hammerhead shark, an unnamed crewmember with a Y-shaped horn resembling that of a prehistoric Brontotherium, and guards who resemble Deinonychus.

Items in the backgrounds of both Lilo and Nani's room reference other Disney movies. Lilo has a stuffed Dumbo doll on her art easel while Nani has a movie poster for Mulan in her room. In addition to these items, a restaurant called "Mulan Wok" can be seen during the scene where Stitch sees the black and white footage of a spider destroying a city in a shop-window television. The directors had worked on Mulan.

Famous Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki's film Kiki's Delivery Service is given a nod by the appearance of "Kiki's Coffee House."

At the end of the movie features snapshots of the future "family" life of Stitch with Lilo and the others, each of them variations of classic images like famous Norman Rockwell illustrations.

[edit] Setting

The hula sequence in Lilo & Stitch plays a key role in establishing the movie's Hawaiian setting.

Lilo and Stitch is the sixth Disney animated feature to take place in the present day, following Oliver & Company. The movie was originally intended to take place in rural Kansas so that Stitch could interact with other characters while still being isolated from wreaking greater havoc. A decision to change the film's setting to the Hawaiian island of Kauaʻi was an important choice in defining the plot more clearly. No other feature-length animated movie had ever taken place on any of the Hawaiian islands before. In Sanders' words:

"Animation has been set so much in ancient, medieval Europe—so many fairy tales find their roots there, that to place it in Hawaiʻi was kind of a big leap. But that choice went to color the entire movie, and rewrite the story for us."

While the animation team visited Kauaʻi to research the locale, their tour guide explained the meaning of ʻohana as it applies to extended families. This concept of ʻohana became an important part of the movie. DeBlois recalls:

"No matter where we went, our tour guide seemed to know somebody. He was really the one who explained to us the Hawaiian concept of ʻohana, a sense of family that extends far beyond your immediate relatives. That idea so influenced the story that it became the foundation theme, the thing that causes Stitch to evolve despite what he was created to do, which is destroy."

The island of Kauaʻi had previously been featured in such films as Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Jurassic Park trilogy. The Disney animators faced the daunting task of meshing the film's plot, which showed the impoverished and dysfunctional life that many Hawaiians and other Westerners lived during the recent economic downturn, with the island's serene beauty. To give a brighter image to the film, the studio used watercolors to paint the backgrounds.

Tia Carrere and Jason Scott Lee, who both have Hawaiian ethnicity, co-wrote the dialogues for their characters.

[edit] Soundtrack

Lilo & Stitch draws largely from Hawaiian culture and makes extensive use of typical features of Hawaiian music such as the slack-key guitar and hula dancing. Because of Lilo's infatuation with Elvis Presley, some of the songs used in the movie (such as "Hound Dog" and "Suspicious Minds") were also included on the soundtrack, as well as covers of Presley's "Burning Love" performed by Wynonna and "Can't Help Falling in Love" performed by Swedish pop group A-Teens, which were both played over the film's closing credits. Hawaiian hula teacher and chanter Mark Keali'i Ho'omalu wrote and sang two songs especially for this film, "Hawaiian Rollercoaster Ride" and "He Mele No Lilo", which he performed together with The Kamehameha Schools Children's Chorus.

The score material was composed by Alan Silvestri. The soundtrack does not include AC/DC's "Back in Black", which was used in some trailers for the film.

[edit] Box office, spin-offs and sequels

The film debuted at number two in the box office (behind Minority Report) grossing $35 million in its opening weekend. It went on to gross a total of $140 million, making it one of the most successful Disney film openings since The Lion King. The film also was a spark of hope in the twilight of a series of early 2000's Disney traditional animation flops (The Emperor's New Groove and Atlantis: The Lost Empire).

Due to its financial success, Disney created a franchise from the Lilo & Stitch film. Following the release of a direct-to-video feature titled Stitch! The Movie, the Disney Channel began airing Lilo & Stitch: The Series as a weekly series starting in the autumn of 2003. A second direct-to-video feature, titled Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch, was released in 2005. This movie features a trailer for another spin-off film called Leroy & Stitch, which was first released in June 2006. Stitch's Great Escape!, a Disney amusement park attraction was made as an overhaul of a previous attraction. Tokyo Disneyland had an event in 2006 called "Find Stitch" [3]. Lilo and Stitch: The Series has been given a 100 episode renewal. Besides, an attraction named Stitch Encounter was open in summer 2006 at Hong Kong Disneyland.

Stitch is also featured as a summon character in Kingdom Hearts II, appearing in Hollow Bastion. He appears in a lab, as per his being an experiment. He causes Sora to enter the computer, and afterwards becomes a summon. A short while later, he takes part of the war scene, helping the heroes by fighting the Heartless with a ray gun.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

Drawn and Quartered, from Star Bulletin
Lilo & Stitch: Collected Stories From the Film's Creators, 2002. Disney Editions. ISBN 0-7868-5382-4.
- This book consists of a series of essays by the film's makers, an unusual format for a book in this genre.