Lilo & Stitch - DVD Review

MOVIE
VIDEO
AUDIO
EXTRAS
OVERALL

One Disc
1.66:1 Anamorphic Widescreen
English Dolby Digital 5.1
French & Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0
THX Certified
Original Theatrical Teasers
Hula Featurette
Hawaii Featurettes
Singers Featurette
On Location With The Directors Featurette
Stitch Featurette
Music Video
Behind The Scenes
Deleted Scenes
Run Time: 85 Minutes
Keep Case

MOVIE
Rated PG for a bit of violence. Just a bit.

I am a kid at heart, or would like to be anyway. One need look no further than my gushing reviews of the Pixar oeuvre to see that. Lately, though, Disney has been leaving me with this feeling that it's time to move on. The carnival has been here long enough and the rides are starting to break down. Sure, the early years are the ones widely regarded as the heyday of Disney animation, but I staunchly disagree. Move forward. The early films from the House of the Mouse are all good, but are at times, well, kinda, sorta, a little bit. . .dated? The chirpy voice of Snow White. I can never get past that one. But even then, those movies were geared directly to kids, something I think Disney got past as they moved on. So we jump forward to fifteen or so years ago, when Disney hit their hot streak and could (almost) do no wrong. This was the era of The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, The Lion King and perhaps the most stunning achievement since Disney Animation began, Beauty and the Beast's best picture nomination. But I am of the mind, and I think that many will agree, that Disney is at its best when it lets itself be wacky AND poignant. In all of the above films, they did just that. Occasionally the hat was tipped a bit further to one extreme or the other, Aladdin towards wacky, Beauty and the Beast towards poignant, but few can argue that this may be the true golden age of Disney cartoons. As of late, they've felt a bit, well, strained. Perhaps they're just sulking in the shadow of the bar that Pixar raised above them with Toy Story 2, that they haven't as of yet been able to reach. Lilo and Stitch comes close, though. It's still far behind the brilliance of my personal golden age of Disney, and also falls shy of the hilarious (and one of my favorites) Hercules, but it's certainly the best they've shown us in years, and that in itself is something great.
It's the story of an alien code named Genetic Experiment 626 (voiced by writer/director Chris Sanders), designed as a destructive force the universe has never before seen by Dr. Jumba (voiced by David Ogden Stiers). Jumba is brought to trial and 626 manages an impressive escape while under the watch of Agent Pleakley (voiced by Kids In The Hall alum Kevin McDonald) and crash lands on Earth which cannot simply be destroyed as it is an Ecological Reserve to breed the endangered species, wait for it, the mosquito. Pleakley is sent to earth along with Jumba, the only one that can track 626. Meanwhile little Lilo (voiced by Daveigh Chase) and her older sister Nani (voiced by Tia Carrere) are fighting to stay together after their parents death, this threat embodied by social services worker Mr. Cobra Bubbles (voiced by Ving Rhames). Lilo believes in family above all, but can't help getting into trouble even if it will threaten that very family. To sate her, Nani decides to buy her a dog but they instead wind up with 626 who has hidden his third pair of arms and antenna to appear more doglike and evade his captors. Lilo calls him Stitch.
As I mentioned before, this is the most fun Disney has allowed one of their films to have in quite a while, and at the same time it is perhaps their best capture of a culture since The Lion King through visuals, music and sound. The Hawaii of Lilo and Stitch is so wonderfully evocative, showing the beautiful surrealism of the hula dance, displaying the remarkable landscape as well. Alan Silvestri's gorgeous songs are put to wonderful use in a film that is (as the trend has gone) not a Disney musical. The songs are rendered through a Hawaiian chorus and are quite beautiful. As for the film itself, taking a page from the Toy Story films, but perhaps more from recent hit Shrek, Lilo and Stitch allows itself to be cheekily more adult in humor. And there isn't a thing wrong with that. True to form all the more mature jokes go right over the youngsters heads and give the adults in the audience something to do as well. This is the key to great animation. As I said about Toy Story 2, it's not a kids movie, it's just a movie that kids can see. That's the definition to strive for, Disney. The universally appealing film that happens to be appropriate for both kids and adults as well. And this is Disney's funniest film since Hercules as well with a delightful Laurel and Hardy comic balance between massive Jumba, with a deep and heavily accented voice from M*A*S*H veteran David Ogden Stiers and Agent Pleakley. And the familial stuff works well enough with Lilo and Nani's discussions about what it means to be a family hitting all the right notes. The inclusion of David (voiced by Jason Scott Lee) as Nani's love interest seems to be the weakest link of the Lilo and Stitch chain. This is a story that is overwhelmed by a truncated running time and many other stories so therefore gets the shortest shrift. That's okay, though. It does provide just enough to remain interesting and not feel superfluous. I really hope this is the kind of movie Disney continues to make, instead of giving us more strange and over the top adventure fare like Treasure Planet and Atlantis. You have our attention, Disney, now give us the character driven films you're known for. Or Hell, get the old Shakespeare book out again and make us another one like The Lion King.

VIDEO QUALITY
Animation either looks really good on DVD or really bad, and a lot depends on the compression. Fortunately, this film is given a lot of space due to its fairly short running time (85 minutes) and the relative lack of supplements and is allowed to showcase every bit of that higher bit rate. The color palate is wonderful in the film and the DVD showcases that quite well. While not as impressive as the computer to DVD transfers of the Pixar films, this is still very good looking. The film is presented in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.66:1 and is anamorphically enhanced for your pleasure. (In a strange mood today)

AUDIO QUALITY
The audio is good, but one wonders where the omnipresent Disney DTS track has gone. That being said, the sound is quite good, full and at times enveloping. The real showoff though is only the music. Composer Alan Silvestri's score and songs sound simply marvelous in 5.1 Surround and while the movie only occasionally veers into real surround sound (the space ship battle being the most notable occurrence) that's...okay.

EXTRAS
What a strange helping of extras Disney has decided to give us here. First of all, as with The Emperor's New Groove before it, Disney has put just enough on this disc for us to think it's a special edition and buy it, only to find a true Special Edition announced soon after we get the shrink wrap and security stickers off. So let's either be angry with Disney, or glad we stood back and waited on buying it. Now, the extras we do get are about sixty percent about Hawaii and thirty nine percent about the film (with a one percent margin of error). First up is a collection of very short shorts about the individual Hawaiian Islands narrated in typical infomercial style ("Did you know that the Hawaiian Islands are volcanoes?" "Yes, Lilo, I did.") by Lilo and Nani. These are slight, but do offer several "Well, how about that?" moments to those of us not extremely familiar with our fiftieth state. (and those of us that just went "Huh?" to that last statement, following it with another one word question: "State?") Next up is a short documentary on Hula dancing. Watching these strange body movements is hypnotic and you find yourself staring at the beautiful dancers and their beautiful bodies. That is until girlfriends across America come home. Then we point out that it's a kid's movie, show off our sensitive side and move on. Now we have a behind the scenes video. BUT NOT OF THE MOVIE! Horror of horrors, this is behind the scenes of Wynona Judd singing Burning Love. Fiancée Willow Rosenberg and I finally stumbled upon an extra that has a bit to do with the film itself. "Young Voices in Hawaii" is a quick short of the main song Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride being performed by a Hawaiian choir. "The Look of Lilo & Stitch" attempts to give us a look at the designing of the film, but it's scant running time (4 minutes) doesn't allow it to show us much. "Animating the Hula" show us, in three minutes, the difficulties of, well, Animating the Hula. "On Location With The Directors" is really the only meaty supplement on the DVD, taking us through the process of the film with special depth given to the voice casting. There is a bizarre short animated sequence that puts Stitch into classic Disney films, but not nearly as well as the delightful collection of Teaser Trailers that inserted Stitch into Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, The Lion King and Aladdin. Finally there are a handful of deleted with intros detailing why they were cut. The most notable is an alternate version of the opening that doesn't feature David Ogden Stiers' Dr. Jumba. All in all these educational bits are great, and a welcome addition to a DVD that already has a lot in the way of extras, here they feel as though they're taking the space of the extras that should rightfully be there. I do hope they're included on the double disc special edition that should be coming soon enough.

CLOSING THOUGHTS
Disney has a lot of talent within its walls. They should cultivate their relationship with the creative minds at Pixar a bit more and hire some people with new and unique visions and stories. Stories like this are so refreshing because they don't come from Disney's library of myths and fables. At the same time they have that very same obstacle to overcome, the fact that they aren't well known stories like Aladdin or Beauty and the Beast. But Disney gets a salute from me, even though the DVD is over priced. I'm waiting for the second issue.