![]() Elvis plays on a record player in the house. Further, the background and music choices nail the feel of the shabby, outdated hotels and restaurants. We see Nani try to gain employment from grocers and tiny shops all in vain. Nani references the fact that the Luau she works at is a “good job.” Further, it’s shown that outside of tourist jobs there isn’t much around. Lilo takes Polaroids of tourists tanning on the beach. ![]() The film layers a complex visual depiction of island life through incorporating the tourism trade into the foreground of the narrative. If coal is the lifeblood of West Virginia, honeymoons are the lifeblood of the islands. Hawai’i’s economy is so contingent on the tourist trade that any ebb and flow of the economy can make or break families. Part of this is that Lilo & Stitch’s contemporary timeframe allows it to show actual Polynesians working in the tourist trade. Lilo & Stitch loves its island but does not shy away from the island’s limitations. Whereas Moana and Pocahontas’ vistas show off stunning feats of animation, Lilo & Stitch concerns itself with using setting provide context and enrich the characters. Lilo & Stitch reflects this in a way that Moana does not. There’s just a main street, some houses, and the ocean. In an interview with “Hana Hou!”, Hawaiian Airlines’ magazine, DeBlois and Sanders observed that during their research tours their guides seemed to “know everybody.” They acknowledged that island life, especially rural island life, is characterized by the type of small town whimsy that politicians center their discourse around. Part of that change was the attempt to capture the sense of community within Hawai’i. Initially, the story took place in rural Kansas, but landlocked Kansas does not necessarily scream isolation as much as a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.įollowing the decision to move the location from Kansas to Hawai’i, the story and style of the film shifted. Lilo states: “It’s nice to live on an island with no large cities.” Isolation was a primary goal when choosing Kaua’i as the feature’s location. The only time Stitch ventures around the island with any expansive visual gusto akin to Pocahontas is when Stitch, craving to destroy a large city, high-jacks a tricycle and goes in search of a city and finds none. Lilo & Stitch opts to make Kaua’i equally as vibrant while stressing the confining aspects of island living. Pocahontas envisions its New World as vast, mysterious, and colorful. Similar to Disney’s Pocahontas, Lilo & Stitch luxuriates in the landscape of its setting. However, in Lilo & Stitch Kaua’i isn’t standing in for a nameless jungle and is instead playing itself for once. The island has been captured on film many times ‐ Raiders of the Lost Ark and Jurassic Park are just two instances that spring to mind. Subsequently, he escapes and boosts himself into hyper-drive landing on the island of Kaua’i. Or, as Lilo Pelekai ( Daveigh Chase) later explains, Stitch’s badness level is “unusually high for someone size.” Stitch is then sentenced to prison as is his creator. Stitch, the little blue-gray space Koala, has been bred to be a mini Godzilla meets Rocket Raccoon. The Grand Councilwoman (Zoe Caldwell) of the Galactic Federation then expositions us through the baseline of Stitch’s character. That’s soon proven a lie as Stitch (Chris Sanders) is the result of Jumba’s experiments. Lilo & Stitch starts with Jumba ( David Ogden Stiers), a Russian-accented gray blob of an alien, facing charges brought by the Galactic Federation for “illegal genetic experiments.” Jumba denies dabbling in genetic machinations. It’s a fun little throwback to Disney’s first foray into depicting Polynesian culture. Stitch, in a post-credit image, is seen shadowing a turtle and its child in the same way. A solid “save the cat” moment that creates a presumption of goodness and a sly reference to Lilo & Stitch. To be fair, Disney did have a reference to Lilo & Stitch in Moana ‐ early on, Moana helps a baby turtle make its way into the ocean by obscuring it from birds under a palm frond. The film was a full-fledged franchise in its heyday spawning multiple television series, two direct-to-video sequels, a Kingdom Hearts cameo, and its own video game. However, neither of those films have seen as much success and then sunk back into Disney-relative obscurity quite like Lilo & Stitch. Yes, Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet exist. Lilo & Stitch is the “Barb” of Disney movies.
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