Lilo & Stitch | Comedy Film Review | Part 2

HECKLED With Jokes

Ok, this is part two of my first and last review of a children’s movie. From now on I’m going to use my bitter and twisted sensibility to skewer productions made for grown ups, as it’s easier, and as they’re grown-ups, they probably deserve it anyways. For example, I’ve described the character of Stitch from this film as resembling a Koala bear on PCP and it’s just not very wholesome to discuss drugs in regards to a children’s film. Children should wait until they are at least 13 or 14 years old before they start taking hard drugs regularly. Trying to maintain a class A drug habit from the proceeds of a paper route is incredibly difficult. I know, I’ve tried. Or, what if the little ankle-biter playing Lilo were to read my review and take it to heart when I criticise her inability to inhabit her role without the use of tired old cliches? I don’t want to feel responsible for that. So from now on, I’ll only be reviewing films based on adult themes. For example, films about people who run around in skin tight body costumes fighting penguins and toads. Or scientists generating herds of dinosaurs from ancient DNA and repeatedly being surprised when they escape and start eating tourists. Or films that try to convince us Nicole Kidman is attractive to men. You know, mature, grown up, sophisticated stuff like that.

By the way, I’m not saying that Maia Kealoha, the 6 year old child actor who plays Lilo, was terrible. Far from it. I just don’t know how committed to the role she was. Robert De Niro, playing Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, gained massive amounts of weight for the film. Christian Bale's weight loss in The Machinist is legendary. Sean Penn, in I Am Sam, banged his head against a wall, three hours every day, for a month to reproduce the required learning difficulties. Daniel Day Lewis, had both his legs amputated and attached to his armpits in preparation for the film The Man With Legs In His Armpits, only to then find out the financial backers had pulled out and the film wouldn’t be made. He then forced himself to work as a plumber in Milan with his legs attached to his armpits for three years as a form of penance. And last but not least, Nicholas Cage has been forced to spend most of his career trying to convince us, the audience, that he is actually part of the human species, and we’re still not buying it.

I just didn’t feel that level of commitment from Kealoha. If she was employing the Stanislavski System or Meisner Technique, it certainly didn’t come across on celluloid and there was certainly no attempt to explore a more nuanced relationship between her and Stitch. Being 6 years old is no excuse for artistic laziness and if I were her management team, I would seriously consider dropping her from their roster. I’M JOKING! She was adorable and fulfilled the title role with aplomb. Not to mention, you can just imagine the joy on the casting director's face after they discovered a child suited for the role not only in the thespian but, more importantly, geographical sense. Let’s face it, having your house firebombed by 7 foot tall Polynesians because you decided to cast a kid from Iowa as the Hawaiian lead role, is no one's idea of a good time.

But Maia was great, along with everybody else in the film actually. Perhaps the only weak link was someone who I’m usually quite fond of, Zach Elephantiasis (I can’t remember how to spell his name. I’ll Google it later). He’s a bit too cuddly to pull off the role of evil genius scientist. I think Joe Pesci would have been a better choice. Seeing Joe asking Stitch if he thinks he’s a clown and then pulling out his handgun and pistol whipping the little alien would have added some much needed grit to a children’s film which for me, was disappointingly low on graphic violence. An added Mafia or organised crime plotline would have really spiced things up. Perhaps Stitch could have been involved in drug or human trafficking or extorting protection money from the Island’s Hula Hula community. Or in homage to The French Connection, there could have been a high speed chase on the main drag of the island with opposing Mafia gangs in cars shooting AK47s or Uzis at each other. Each Mafia family would then “go to the mattresses” and have a protracted bloody feud resulting in the deaths of dozens of gangsters and even a few innocent bystanders in garish shirts. Some parents in the movie going audience would inevitably whine about this being “age inappropriate” but I think the rest of us would welcome a bit of aggro in an otherwise pretty tame outing.

In fact I wish more films aimed at the children’s market would explore this. Imagine if Snow White and The Seven Dwarves was combined with A Clockwork Orange. The dwarves could be droogs and Alex, the leader of the droogs, could play Grumpy. Or think of Bambi in a mashup with Jaws, where Thumper is preying on a resort community at the height of the summer season and three men are sent to hunt him down by throwing buckets of carrots out of their car as bait. That last one is pretty weak, I admit, but the first one has legs, Picture this opening. There was me, that is Grumpy, and my three droogs, that is Sneezy, Bashful and Doc. It just works!

There is a tiny bit of drama in the film that reflects the real world as Stitch is being pursued by the Central Intelligence Agency, or the CIA, which is the secret police of the American government, similar to the KGB or Stasi. Although it’s never really explained why they’re seeking him. Perhaps they’re trying to find someone else to frame for their many presidential assassination attempts, who knows. Worryingly, the CIA agent they send to find Stitch is wearing a hooped earring, which, let’s face it, is never a good look, unless you're a genie and you live in a lamp. George Michael just about got away with wearing one but years later, he ended up meeting up with a CIA agent in a public toilet. Not for the exchange of government secrets but in the pursuit of an extremely brief romantic interlude using a truncheon. It’s all a big circle, I guess.

My final thoughts on Lilo & Stitch is that if you’re seeking murder, mayhem, explosions, brutal beatdowns, torture, kidnappings, terrorist attacks, viral pandemics, even more explosions and punching people in the nose, this film is severely lacking in all of those things. If machine gun fire and rocket propelled grenades help you sleep at night you will be incredibly disappointed in the lack of bloodshed in this film. And I feel this is something the filmmakers need to take a long, hard look at themselves in the mirror for. Just because you’ve been put in charge of a “children’s” film does not mean you have to pander to the under tens. It’s not them buying the tickets. As I mentioned before, our bizarre child labour laws make it almost impossible for an 8 year old to earn a living, never mind pay his way for a night out, so how about cutting all the namby-pamby feel good family crap and instead, giving us a giant yacht being blown to smithereens as its nameless crew/ henchman scream in agony while being burned alive and falling into the sea. Is that too much to ask?

Other than that it’s a fun film and I highly recommend it.