Pop Goes the Culture!

Rainbow K says:
"The movie is basically about a little Hawaiian girl who has no friends and finds one."

Meera says:
"The movie is about a genetically engineered creature gone horribly astray, and the intergalactic search to find him and dissect him for his own good."

That may be a bit of an over-simplification on both our parts, but SEE THE MOVIE. Much like the movie, "Toys," while the commercials were highly entertaining, none of them told you enough about the movie to get any idea of whether or not it was something you wanted to see.

"Toys" turned out to be not a children's film.

"Lilo and Stitch" is a kid's movie that adults can love.

Rainbow K says:
"It was really funny. Stitch was going to 'Block sewer lines, reverse street signs, and steal everybody's left shoe.'" She laughs.

Meera says:
"It had some incredibly on-the-spot dialogue. I was almost crying in the first few scenes between Lilo and Nani because of how true it seemed. I'd been there. I'd been both of them."

Rainbow K says:
"It was funny, and sad, and pretty cool."

Meera says:
"You go in there thinking, 'Stitch is cool.' You come out of it realizing Lilo is unlike almost any other Disney heroine. She's not tall, skinny, blonde, or a singer, but she's got grit, attitude, and she's got style."

Rainbow K says:
"You remember when she calls up Mr. Bubbles and says, 'Everything's all right now. My dog's found the chainsaw.' That was really funny. And, and, and, and... when the bad guys were playing hot potato--"
"We can't give away all the good bits."
"Well, it was really funny."

Ever since the first commercial, with the "Beauty and the Beast" scene where Belle tells Stitch to, "Get your own movie," and Stitch replies, "OK," he'd been a hit in our household. It was followed up with Stitch surfing in a "Little Mermaid" cameo, Jasmine being seduced off Aladdin's carpet and onto Stitch's spacescooter, and a Lion King, "That's not Simba," bit that had us watching and comparing ideas of what the movie was going to be like.

I went in with very little expectation of the storyline. Rainbow K saw some of a preview on Toon Disney, so she was better prepared. From the beginning I was impressed with the fact that while the animation wasn't intricate or delicate, it was still quite appropriate for the story. The colours and designs are pleasing to the eye, from the curves of the Hawaiians to the aliens.

Then the movie impressed me in one particularly important way: It was SMART.

A lot of obstacles in movies for the main characters (especially for children) have been known to forget little details, like the main character can fly, or the toughness factor. Stitch is almost indestructible, and the writers don't forget it. They remember he can crawl on ceilings. They remember that he's smart, and he learns quickly. Towards the end he pulls a stunt that had me chuckling and making comments to the LintKing that I would have to remember it for my next supers game.

Rainbow K says:
"I was really looking forward to it because Stitch was an alien and he was really cool. The songs were really neat, too." She mentions, "Hawaiian Rollercoaster Ride," which was a neat scene and very uninvasive.

Unlike a lot of past Disney flicks, where you could see, "PAUSE, and BEGIN SONG" almost imprinted straight from the script onto the screen, this one doesn't have gratuitous singing. There's a soundtrack that you notice, but not one that overwhelms you.

Rainbow K thinks the movie really does fall within her age range (the 9-13 crowd) but notices that the adults who saw it with her are still talking about it a couple days after having seen it, so it must have worked for them, too.

Anything more and we'd be giving too much away. Enjoy it. It's fun.