‘Lilo & Stitch’ (2025) Review — An Underwhelming Live Action Remake

Every time I watch a remake that involves science fiction technology—in this case, characters in the live-action Lilo & Stitch (2025) using a gun that portals people through walls—I wonder why they can’t just teleport back to a place and time to rediscover the magic of the original. Clearly, this version lacks that kind of imagination. The only thing these laser shooters can do is open up walls to walk through instead of, you know, opening a door or a window.

Now, don’t get me wrong—the new Lilo & Stitch is cute enough. The young actress who plays Lilo is downright adorable and has the added charm of never acting beyond her age. The frenzied animation of Stitch, voiced once again by Chris Sanders, has moments of genuine levity. However, something feels off throughout the entire film. In the third act, I waited for a moment to tie the story together—a moment that never comes. It leaves you wondering why they couldn’t use a damn portal to tug at our hearts and make it better.

The story follows two sisters. Nani (Sydney Elizebeth) is an ambitious, athletic, straight-A student who has put her life on hold to become the legal guardian of her younger sister, Lilo (Maia Kealoha). Their parents died just months earlier, and the Pelekai siblings are struggling. Lilo is acting out at school—during a native Hawaiian dance recital, she pushes a classmate, likely projecting her feelings about Nani not showing up to watch her perform.

Nani is doing her best to raise Lilo while juggling household responsibilities and trying to hold a job. Assigned to their case is Mrs. Kekoa, a patient and empathetic social worker (Wayne’s World’s Tia Carrere, who originally voiced Nani in the 2002 animated film—a nice touch). Mrs. Kekoa gives Nani a one-week deadline to keep her job, pay off the growing stack of bills, and secure health insurance for both of them, or else she’ll be forced to place Lilo in foster care.

However, things are about to be turned even more upside down when the sisters are visited by an alien (voiced by The Wild Robot’s Chris Sanders) who looks and acts like a rabid blue koala. In reality, he is known as “Experiment 626,” though Lilo affectionately names him “Stitch” after he cuts up the seats in Nani’s truck. Stitch came to Earth after being banished by the Grand Councilwoman (Ted Lasso’s Hannah Waddingham) of the United Galactic Federation.

Believing he would perish in water, Stitch instead crash-lands on solid ground. The Grand Councilwoman then sends Dr. Jookiba (Zach Galifianakis) and Agent Pleakley (Billy Magnussen) to retrieve him. The pairing of these two characters—and their performers—highlights how uneven the film can be. Magnussen excels at physical comedy, delivering most laughs outside the animated titular character. Meanwhile, veteran comedian Galifianakis’ take on the “hairy potatoes” scientist feels wooden and stiffer than a well-crafted papa he‘e nalu.

Sanders stepped aside, wrote, and co-directed the original with Dean DeBlois to let Dean Fleischer Camp take the lead. The lack of emotional connection is utterly shocking. Especially knowing that Camp is the genius behind one of the most remarkable feats of animation cinema of the 21st century, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. A film that knows poignant themes of loneliness, connections, grief, and letting go.

It feels as if Camp watered down a script from Chris Kekaniokalani Bright, who wrote Moana, of the Hawaiian community, the only one that deals with a single line of never leaving someone behind. It’s as if they were watching Black Hawk Down?

Lilo & Stitch is a G-rated live-action remake that never recaptures the original’s wonderment and unique point of view. Even the main characters feel thinly drawn and lack real dimensionality—take Courtney B. Vance’s undercover government agent, for example, whose belief that protecting the country outweighs saving a little girl comes off as underdeveloped and one-note. The film’s themes feel hollow, as if it’s trying to teach children moral lessons without actually earning them.

And when it finally reaches its big emotional moment near the end, it misses the opportunity to use those portal guns to deliver meaningful closure. Instead, it settles for a boring, safe ending that falls flat. When it comes to missing the big moment, Lilo & Stitch forget the unspoken interconnection life brings that makes moments like these matter the most.

You can watch the live-action remake of Lilo & Stitch only in theaters May 23rd!