Review: ‘Lilo and Stitch’ is fast relief

Geoff Carter

Friday, June 21, 2002 | 10:10 a.m.

Grade: *** 1/2

Starring: The voices of Daveigh Chase, Tia Carrere, Jason Scott Lee, Kevin McDonald, David Ogden Stiers and Ving Rhames.

Screenplay: Chris Sanders and Dean Deblois.

Director: Dean Deblois and Chris Sanders.

Rated: PG for mild sci-fi action.

Running time: 85 minutes.

Movie times: http://www.vegas.com/movies/

The title characters of Walt Disney Pictures' new animated feature "Lilo and Stitch" are hell on ice. The former is a no-nonsense 8-year-old with a wicked right hook, a gift for shooting unflattering candid photographs and a love of Elvis. The latter is a dangerous alien criminal with superhuman strength, a hard-wired destructive impulse and four arms.

While this pairing wouldn't bode well for humanity in a Ted Mikels picture, it's just right for the warmest and funniest buddy film to come from the Mouse since "The Jungle Book."

"Lilo and Stitch" brings together so many seemingly disparate elements -- a family drama, a space opera and a slapstick comedy -- with such high style and joy that the picture zips through an hour and a half as if it were nothing.

The kids at the preview screening laughed at the slapstick, and the adults laughed at the picture's sly nods to "Superman," "E.T." and even "The X Files." All laughed at a scene that had two aliens fighting over a brunette wig: "You hate me because I'm pretty!"

Set entirely in outer space and Hawaii, "Lilo and Stitch" tells the story of its two charges concurrently until it can bring them together. Lilo (voiced by Daveigh Chase) is being raised by her older sister Nani (Tia Carrere); they've lost their parents in an auto accident, but are still very much sisters, for good or (mostly) ill.

"We're sisters; we're supposed to fight. It's our job," Lilo says after a partcularly heated argument.

Lilo's temperament keeps losing Nani jobs, and before long a social worker named Cobra Bubbles (voiced in hilarious deadpan by Ving Rhames). He gives the sisters just a few days to clean up their act before he puts Lilo in a foster home. Desperate, Nani takes Lilo to the animal shelter to get a puppy, and naturally, she picks the ugliest puppy in the pound.

But it's not a puppy. Stitch, voiced by director Chris Sanders, is a genetically-engineered powerhouse designed to wreak havoc. He escapes imprisonment by flying to Earth and pretending to be Lilo's puppy. His programming kicks in at inopportune moments -- bad dog, put the Volkswagen down -- but he fights it; he discovers, to his surprise, that he likes where he is.

The fact that he's being hunted by his creator (David Ogden Stiers) and an uptight one-eyed bureaucrat (Kevin McDonald of "Kids in the Hall") provides added incentive.

It would be unfair of me to give away too many of the film's jokes, but many of them are so fresh that they beg to be shared. A midfilm parody of Elvis' "Blue Hawaii" is classic. Bubbles' dialogue never fails to draw a laugh, and I would have loved to have seen Rhames delivering the line, "You have been adrift in the sheltered harbor of my patience." And the film's conclusion is both funny and affirming -- what kid wouldn't want his own UFO?

Bright, colorful and heartwarming, "Lilo and Stitch" is a firm reminder of how good family entertainment can be. If there's any justice in Hollywood (there isn't), this picture should knock the horrible "Scooby-Doo" out of multiplexes.

Originality seems to be at a premium these days, and "Lilo and Stitch" offers a galaxy of original pleasures.