112 min | PG | May 23, 2025 | Walt Disney Pictures
Dean Fleischer Camp remakes Lilo & Stitch with live actors and a CGI alien. The film captures the heart of the original without trying to improve what already worked.
Live-action Disney remakes fail when they try to fix stories that were never broken. Lilo & Stitch succeeds by understanding the original was perfect and the job is simply to translate it faithfully to a new medium. A lonely Hawaiian girl befriends a destructive alien experiment. The two of them form a family. The premise remains as powerful as it was in 2002. The execution respects that.
Maia Kealoha plays Lilo in her film debut and brings genuine emotion to a role that could have been saccharine. She finds a girl struggling with grief and isolation without performing tragedy. Chris Sanders returns to voice Stitch and the character remains anarchic and lovable. Zach Galifianakis and Billy Magnussen play Jumba and Pleakley with comic energy that never undercuts the emotional stakes. Courtney B. Vance plays Cobra Bubbles with the same quiet authority the animated version had.
Dean Fleischer Camp directed Marcel the Shell with Shoes On and understands how to find genuine emotion in unconventional characters. The Hawaiian locations are shot with natural beauty and cultural respect. The film incorporates actual Hawaiian culture and language in ways the original could not. Stitch is rendered with effects that make him feel tactile and present. The destruction he causes has weight and consequence.
The film adds nothing unnecessary and removes nothing essential. This is a faithful adaptation that understands fidelity to the source is not the same as shot-for-shot recreation. The emotional core remains intact. The humor lands. The ending delivers the same catharsis. This is how you remake a classic.