Force the Sherman I: A "Stitch" in Disney

You may or may not have read my last essay, in which I bemoaned the moral downfall of a certain multi-million dollar merchandising machine/animation studio. It's right below this on the main page, if you want to catch up. I can wait...

Anyway, I figured I should start off the marathon with a contradiction to everything I said: Disney's 2002 animated feature, “Lilo and Stitch.”

“Lilo and Stitch” may well be one of the best modern Disney films, and it success lies in their very antithesis. Instead of labored and monotonous songs, you have musical montages set to the songs of Elvis Presley himself. The absence of a major archetypal villain, another Disney staple, is filled by several bad-intentioned characters who, in the end, band together against a greater foe.

Stitch (co-writer and directer, Chris Sanders) or Experiment 626 was genetically designed to cause destruction and mayhem. His creator, Dr. Joomba Jookiba (David Ogden Stiers) -- or, as he prefers to be called, “Evil Genius” -- created him with the intent of global domination. As the movie opens, we see Joomba on trial before a sort of Galactic High Council. The evil doctor is sentenced to life imprisonment. Stitch, being deemed an abomination, is sentenced to exile on a desolate rock. It goes without saying that Stitch escapes from his jailers, steals an escape pod and crash lands on Earth -- one of the Hawaiian islands to be exact -- but I went ahead and said it anyway.

There, we meet sisters Lilo (Daveigh Chase) and Nani (Tia Carrere). Nani is trying her best to keep a job and raise Lilo, but Lilo is proving to be difficult. Her abundant imagination makes her a social leper, and when she tries to be nice, she is teased. Their parents being absent is another contrary-to-modern-Disney trait. Lilo and Nani are on their own, and, while they love each other, they fight a lot. At times Lilo will even lock Nani outside the house. The relationship of the sisters smacks of a realism that's refreshing to see in a children's movie.

A social worker has been assigned to Nani and Lilo, a hulking, mountain of a man Mr. Bubbles (Ving Rhames, who else?). Dr. Joomba, meanwhile, has been released and employed by the High Council to hunt down 626. He is aided by Agent Pleakley (Kevin McDonald), an expert on the endangered species of mosquitoes on the Galactic Preservation known as Earth. Stitch has been run over by an entire trucking convoy and wakes up in a pound... and the movie has not even really gotten started yet.

Lilo adopts Stitch, against everyone's best wishes. Stitch, discovering that his creator has been sent to destroy him, uses Lilo as a shield. Along the way, they start to form an unlikely friendship. Joomba even muses on a philosophical quandary in relation to Stitch. He was created to destroy, with biological markers to gravitate towards thriving metropolises and large business areas, to kill and destroy... yet he lands on a peaceful rural tropical island. He has become a creature without purpose and must cope.

The rest of the movie deals with all these relationships, emotional revelations and attempted assassinations of Stitch, climaxing with space craft chases and exploding volcanoes. All with Island music and Elvis playing behind it. It's a really weird Disney movie. Even the way their drawn, Lilo and Nani are not beautiful Princess. They are chubby in places, Lilo having a rolly-polly shape and Nani having thick thighs... y'know, like real people.

Stitch is a genetic abomination, repeatedly called “unclean” by those hunting him. But even Joomba and Pleakley eventually help Stitch fight what amounts to the movie's overall villain: an Intergalactic Policeman, prejudiced against genetic mutations perhaps, but still not unabashedly evil.

All in all, “Lilo and Stitch” is a surprising masterpiece of sorts. If the movie does have flaws, they're forgivable. The sheer imagination of the plot wins with me. This is the Disney I remember and love.

/ 5

Yours Until Hell Freezes Over,

Jeremiah