Review: Disney‘s ‘Lilo & Stitch’ is familiar and safe, but it works

It’s hard to say how differently Disney should approach the live-action updates of movies from its huge catalog of animated features.

Do anything but a largely faithful adaptation and the company runs the risk of upsetting fans of the originals.

That’s certainly the approach the House of Mouse has taken with “Lilo & Stitch” — the live-action-meets-computer-generated-imagery remake of the 2002 animated fave — and the result is another endeavor that feels too safe and overly familiar. (This is especially the case if, say, you recently watched the original in preparation for a review of the new film.)

Oh, sure, director Dean Fleischer Camp and screenwriters Chris Kekaniokalani Bright and Mike Van Waes have made a few tweaks from the old version, but the new one retains the major story beats, starting with the introduction of the alien we will come to know as Stitch.

The small, blue, furry, four-armed fellow — voiced again by Chris Sanders, who also co-directed the 2002 affair — starts out as Experiment 626. A highly intelligent but maniacal little thing, the creation of the ambitious scientist Jumba (Zach Galifianakis, starting out in a voice performance before appearing on screen) is exiled by the United Galactic Federation.

Not one to simply accept his fate, 626 uses his smarts to reroute the spacecraft taking him to his bleak future and crashes it on Earth — on Hawaii’s Big Island.

The island is home to 6-year-old Lilo Pelekai (Maia Kealoha), who, following the death of her parents, is being raised by her 18-year-old sister, Nani (Sydney Elizebeth Agudong, who’s also a singer and songwriter). This tough time in Lilo’s life is compounded by the fact she doesn’t have any friends, and she lashes out at a girl who picks on her during a hula dance performance. This is only the latest bit of trouble for Lilo, whom we meet bringing a sandwich to a fish — yes, a fish, underwater — and letting a neighbor’s chickens free from their pen. She is, if nothing else, a colorful personality.

That she’s regularly getting into trouble and that Nani is letting bills pile up has led to social services becoming concerned with the situation and case worker Mrs. Kekoa (Tia Carrere, who voiced Nani in the first “Lilo”) suspecting Lilo may be better off with a foster family — especially after seeing Lilo’s behavior after Nani misses the ill-fated hula performance.

The infusion of “Stitch” — who, after he hides a couple of arms and other appendages, convinces Lilo he is a dog when she encounters him at the local animal shelter — serves only to make the situation more unstable. He thrives on chaos and destruction, and while Lilo enjoys that, she realizes she must help him suppress his base urges if she is to remain living with her sis.

Fortunately for Lilo, Stitch is motivated to try to be good, as he is using this small family to shield himself from Jumba, who has been sent to Earth, along with fellow offworlder and Earth expert Pleakley (Billy Magnussen, “Road House”), to retrieve him. Fleischer Camp works to mine comedy from this odd couple, who use alien tech to appear in human form, but they’re only mildly funny — surprising given the comedic abilities of Galifianakis (“The Hangover”).

The human-cloning bit is a new “Lilo & Stitch” wrinkle, as is the handling of the character Cobra Bubbles, the social services agent voiced in the first movie, memorably, by Ving Rhames. Here, he’s a CIA agent, portrayed without much gusto by Courtney B. Vance (“The People vs. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story”), who goes undercover as Mrs. Kekoa’s boss to get to the bottom of things.

Perhaps we expected a bit more from Fleischer Camp, who helmed the “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” short films and the resulting excellent 2021 feature, all of which he co-created with his wife, Jenny Slate. That film is unusual enough that you’d figure his “Lilo” would find a few more odd but adorable avenues to travel down en route to a conclusion that honors the ham-fisted but touching finish of the first film.

Still, what works in the original works here as well, most importantly the relationships between Lilo and Stitch and between Lilo and Nani, the former telling the latter early on that she likes her better as a sister than as a mom but increasingly works to hold on to the family she still has. Stitch, meanwhile, learns what it means to have family, a concept as foreign to him as the Elvis Presley music his new friend adores.

At the end of the day, newcomer Kealoha is cute and Stitch is chock-full of personality, and that he has slightly stronger communication skills than in the first film aids the storytelling.

“‘Ohana’ means family,” we hear repeatedly in both versions of “Lilo & Stitch.” “Family means nobody gets left behind.”

It would be more than fine if we haven’t left behind this Lilo and Stitch.

2.5 stars (out of 4)

Rating: PG for action, peril and thematic elements.

Where: Playing in theaters.