Stitch! The Movie

(The Disneycember logo is shown, before showing clips from Stitch! The Movie)

Doug (vo): It's funny. When I first saw the movie Lilo and Stitch, my initial thought was I loved everything with the human characters and thought the alien stuff was only okay. Well, now with its sequel Stitch, I find that, strangely enough, the human stuff is only okay but the aliens are actually a little bit more entertaining this time. Does that make for a good sequel? Well, let's look at the story.

Story
Doug (vo): Lilo and Stitch are enjoying their time getting used to their new alien family. Yeah, remember the Russian alien and the skinny one? They're all living together now. But the alien captain of the guard is furious because he's lost his job and he wants revenge. So he comes across this sort of strange hamster-rabbit thing with a German accent...how do all these aliens have Earth accents anyway? And he's sent to get the Russian alien, bring him back and find out where all the other experiments that he worked on are. Yeah, remember? Stitch is #626, so where are the other 625? Well, it turns out he's hidden them, and Lilo and Stitch come across a few. So it's up to them, not only to discover these other experiments...kind of like finding Pokemon in a sense...but also to save their alien comrade.

Review
Doug (vo): So like I said before, this time, it's a little switched around. The aliens in this actually have some really good laughs. This weird rabbit-gerbil thing is pretty funny, the captain of the guards is trying to be serious, but keeps having to come across these annoyances. He even gets this sidekick, voiced by Rob Paulsen. Even Stitch gets a few more laughs this time. I also really like how the skinny alien is actually really getting used to wearing women's clothing, and he's totally okay with it. Who knows? This might be the first openly transvestite Disney character.

(Several clips focusing on Lilo and her family are shown)

Doug (vo): Unfortunately, though, like I said, the human characters are not as good. They're not the worst, they're just kind of bland and generic. But for me, Lilo is one of my favorite kid characters, and to see her just kind of be like any other generic Disney kid is really kind of a letdown. Even Nani, who had to go through so much in the first film, now just kind of has this side role. I don't know. I felt like coming off the first film, where these connections were so strong and so good, this one is just kind of a background thing. Maybe that's why it was called Stitch, because they just wanted to give him more attention and not as much to the humans, but I like the humans, I liked them a lot. I wish more effort was put into them in this one.

Final thought
Doug (vo): But let's also be honest, this isn't really meant to be a fleshed out motion picture. I mean, look at the animation. It looks like a TV show and, yeah. (The poster for the TV series is shown) It became a TV show. It's a little difficult to be hard on it when it's pretty obvious it's just supposed to be a pilot. And as pilots go, it got a few laughs. The aliens were neat, they were creative, I liked the idea of trying to find more of them. In fact, I think that's what the show's about. But, yeah, it is a letdown that a character as good as Nani and Lilo are just reduced down to, well, any generic character you would see in a Disney sequel. But I guess if you're just looking for a laugh or two and something relatively harmless, it's...fine. It's fine for little kids, I think that's who it was aimed at, and there's nothing really insulting in it. I mean, Lilo and Nani are not done well, but they're totally passable for the audience it's aiming towards. It is what it is, a cute little direct-to-DVD pilot for a TV show and, yeah, you just kind of take what comes with that. I wouldn't watch it again, I don't really think I got much out of it even watching it the first time, but for what it's trying to do, it does it okay. Get lost in space and see for yourself.

(The final scene, showing Lilo and Stitch driving off in a car to find the remaining 623 experiments, is shown)