My Thoughts on “Stitch! The Movie”

(This is the DVD cover 📀 for Stitch! The Movie.) 

It’s been two months, the dust has settled after the release of the live action remake, and I am now ready to return to world of Lilo & Stitch. The original world, not this new world that they’re now going to try to make since the live action Lilo & Stitch remake was extremely successful, more successful 🤑 than probably anyone was expecting (or wanted it to be 😒), and they already confirmed that they’re going to make a sequel to that film, no matter how much people disliked it. No, I’m taking a look back on the real Lilo & Stitch, the real expanded universe that was created in the direct-to-DVD 📀 realm and on the small screen, starting with this: Stitch! The Movie, the first direct-to-DVD Lilo & Stitch movie 📀. 

 

This movie serves as both a sequel to the original Lilo & Stitch movie from 2002 (the good one that actually matters) and a pilot to the TV series that followed, Lilo & Stitch: The Series, or simply Disney’s Lilo & Stitch. So, Disney and the people behind this movie and the series took a similar approach to Nickelodeon and the creators of both Jimmy Neutron and Barnyard, where they start off with a movie and then have a series, rather than the other way around like most cartoon shows. Lilo & Stitch (2002) may started it all, but Stitch! The Movie really did show what the Lilo & Stitch franchise was really going to be up until the live action remake released in May of this year. A Disney franchise relegated to just the direct-to-DVD 📀 and made-for-TV realm, but still pretty good regardless. 

 

I mean, the original Lilo & Stitch had a decent budget, it cost $80 million 💵, it still wasn’t big as some of Disney’s other animated movies at the time, and it made outside of the main studio in Burbank, instead being made at a different studio in Florida with a comparative smaller team and less scrutiny from executives. To give you a point of comparison, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, the big Disney animated movie released before Lilo & Stitch (2002), had a budget of $90 million-$120 million 💵, and was a massive production that was made at the main Walt Disney Feature Animation studio in Burbank in full view of the executives. And it made way less money 💵 than Lilo & Stitch (2002) did, making only $186.1 million 💵 worldwide and pretty much being declared a box office disappointment, compared to Lilo & Stitch (2002)’s worldwide box office total of $273.1 million 💵. 

 

So, the first Lilo & Stitch movie was an underdog, it was comparatively small passion project by Chris Sanders, and it totally paid off and made more money 💵 than the big animated productions at the time, the ones people expected to be big deals but ultimately weren’t. It was Lilo & Stitch (2002), the little movie that could that ended up being the bigger deal than either Atlantis or Treasure Planet, and I like both of those movies. I just wanted to review this movie after Predator: Killer of Killers so that I can finally start watching the series. I’ve been feeling like watching some episodes of the series, and I feel like I can’t do that until I review the movie that kicked off the series and that’s Stitch! The Movie. 

 

Speaking of watching episodes of a series, I do plan on reviewing Martin Mystery on this blog at some point. If you’re don’t know what that show is, it’s a Canadian sci-fi horror paranormal animated series 🇨🇦 (French-Canadian 🇫🇷🇨🇦 actually) that’s based on an Italian comic book series 🇮🇹, a couple of teenagers (step siblings; a step brother and a step sister) and a caveman ♂︎ (a Neanderthal) who work for a secretive organization that deals with the paranormal and they all go missions responding to paranormal happenings all over the world. Some of it involves aliens 👽, some of it involves ghosts 👻, some of it involves demons 😈, some of it involves witches and warlocks, some of it involves genies 🧞‍♀️, some of it involves voodoo, some of it involving vengeful shaman and spirits, some of it involves weird supernatural cults and tribes, and some of it involves creatures from other dimensions. 

 

Regardless of whatever strange phenomena or creatures they face, Martin Mystery, his step sister, Diana Lombard, and their caveman friend, Java always manage to save the day in the world. It’s a good take on the “monster-of-the-week” formula and a good companion or counterpart to Totally Spies!, which was made by the same company as Martin Mystery, Image Entertainment Corporation. In fact, Totally Spies! and Martin Mystery are sister shows of each other, targeting two different demographics (Totally Spies! was targeted at girls ♀︎ while Martin Mystery was targeted at boys ♂︎) and even had a crossover called “Totally Mystery Much?” Though that was really more of a Totally Spies! episode than a Martin Mystery episode and it didn’t feature any Martin Mystery characters besides Martin himself and M.O.M. (Mystery Organization Manager). 

Now, even though I said earlier, in a few paragraphs ago, that this movie does serve as a sequel to the first movie, this is somewhat of a debate over how much of an essential viewing it is for anyone looking to get into the Lilo & Stitch franchise beyond just the original movie or the remake. I have seen some people completely disregard this movie and just go straight to Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch, and regard that movie as the true sequel. Well, this movie came out first, so even though it’s called Lilo & Stitch 2, it’s actually the third movie. They’re both kind of sequels to the first movie, and approach it in a different way, and you can watch either one without needing to watch the other since they barely acknowledge each other. 

 

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Lilo & Stitch 2, but I’m pretty sure there’s no mention of there being any other experiments besides Stitch, or there being a Hämsterviel, or Gantu and Experiment 625 (later named Reuben because of his affinity for sandwiches 🥪) being on the planet hunting the other experiments as well as Lilo and Stitch. It’s just that Stitch has a glitch, as the title so eloquently put it. You could argue that Lilo & Stitch 2 takes place earlier in the timeline than Stitch! The Movie does, and that it takes place much sooner after the first movie than this does. But, Nani has her same job that she does in this movie and in the series, so maybe she already have that job even before the events of this movie and the series. Or maybe, Lilo & Stitch 2 just takes place in its own little offshoot timeline and ignores the events of this movie and the series, and only acknowledges the first movie. I really don’t know. 

 

This movie is required viewing if you want to watch the series because it pretty much sets everything up. It creates the status quo in which the whole series it takes place. It established that there were other experiments besides Stitch and that they all have different abilities, it established that Stitch sees the other experiments as his “cousins,” and him and Lilo wanting to rehabilitate the other experiments and give them a purpose (or “a place where they belong” as Lilo puts it) rather than kill them like everyone else wanted to do, it introduced Dr. Hämsterviel and established him as the main antagonist, the real big bad, it set up Gantu and Experiment 625 (again, later known as Reuben) getting stuck on Earth 🌎 and having to work for Hämsterviel and taking orders from him, it set up the other 623 experiments (because Sparky and Experiment 625 were already rehydrated 💦 and awaken) being scattered around the island, and it established Lilo and Stitch working for the Galactic Federation as official “Experiment Finders” (or whatever the official designation was, I don’t exactly remember), being officially deputized by the Grand Councilwoman ♀︎ herself. 

 

The movie even ends with a few of the other experiments being rehydrated 💦, and Lilo and Stitch going on their first mission to locate them. It even ends with the theme song to the series, that amazing theme song, “Aloha, E Komo Mai” by Danny Jacob and Mark Hammond (lyrics by Danny Jacob and Ali B Olomo, and performed by Jump5) in the end credits. BTW, did you know that a lot of the footage used in the intro to Lilo & Stitch: The Series came from this movie? That’s another thing that this franchise has in common with Jimmy Neutron, they used footage from the movie that kicked off the series in the intro to the series itself. Though, The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron did stop using footage from the movie and started using more footage from the show in the intro, starting with Season 3. Whereas Lilo & Stitch: The Series used the same footage from the movie and certain episodes from Season 1 in the intro for both of its two seasons. If you have no interest in watching the series, then you can just skip this movie and go straight to Lilo & Stitch 2. 

When comparing Lilo & Stitch 2 and this movie, Stitch! The Movie, Lilo & Stitch 2 definitely has the better animation. Because while it was made on a lower budget than the first one and was released direct-to-DVD 📀, it still manages to maintain the same level of quality on the animation. Like, it still looks the same animation as the first movie, and you could believe that it’s the same world as the first movie. Whereas Stitch! The Movie was clearly made on even lower budget than Lilo & Stitch 2 was, and looks like it was made for TV, which it kind of was. It was a direct-to-DVD 📀 movie just like Lilo & Stitch 2 ended up being, but it was still made on a much lower budget and more cheaply made compared to either Lilo & Stitch (2002) or Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch. The animation isn’t as good, and while it does kind of like the same world, it’s not exactly. It’s more like an approximation. It’s what you would expect from a TV level budget (at the time), which is what the people made this movie had to work with. 

 

At least, they got the same voice actress to voice Lilo in this movie, Daveigh Chase, something that Lilo & Stitch 2 wasn’t able to do. They had to get Dakota Fanning to voice her in that movie. I don’t know why, they brought Daveigh Chase to voice both in this movie and in the series, and the series was still going on when Lilo & Stitch 2 came out. Not only that, but she also voiced the character in Leroy & Stitch, which was the finale to the entire series. It was started by a movie and was ended by a movie. so I don’t know why they didn’t do it. They got everyone else to reprise their roles, but not Daveigh Chase. I mean, Dakota Fanning did a decent job, and got pretty close to sounding like her, but you could still kind of tell that it wasn’t the same girl ♀︎ voicing her. So, it’s nice that they were able to get her voice Lilo in this movie, she is so her. She’s the voice I most associate with the character, and I can’t really imagine anyone else voicing that character even though somebody already did. 

This movie does have some value beyond just being a set up for the animated series, it is still pretty good on its own I would say. It’s a pretty short movie, it’s only an hour and 3 minutes long, or 63 minutes long, which is barely enough for it to be considered feature length, and it doesn’t waste its time or feel it’s padding to get to feature length. It uses its 63 minutes (or 1 hour and 3 minutes) pretty effectively and efficiently to tell its story. And it’s a pretty simply one too, Gantu and Hämsterviel kidnap Jumba so that they can get their hands on that device he’s keeping all of his other experiments in, and Lilo and Stitch has to try to get him back while also making sure that Jumba’s device doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. And by wrong hands, I really just mean Gantu and Hämsterviel, they’re our only two bad guys here, and Hämsterviel is really the evil one here. 

 

Gantu is just dealing with the bad hand he’s been dealt, and taking any job he can get, and Hämsterviel was really the only one willing to hire him after he was fired by the Grand Councilwoman ♀︎ for his mishandling of the attempted capture of Stitch, and the fact that he almost kidnapped a human girl ♀︎, that he involved a civilian. Keep in mind too, he didn’t just kidnap her because she just happened to be right next to Stitch when he launched that net at him, he knew that he had her and decided to keep her so that he could “have a little snack later.” He was literally planning to eat her, just like how the Bug 🪳 (usually referred to as Edgar 🪳) in Men in Black (1997) was planning to eat Dr. Laurel Weaver (later known as Agent L after he joined the MIB in Men in Black: The Series, but then was neuralized by J and went back to civilian life sometime before the events of Men in Black II) while on his trip back to his home planet (on the flying saucer 🛸 at the World’s Fair) after kidnapping her at the morgue while he snatched the galaxy off of Orion 🐈’s collar and swallowed it. 

 

He could’ve easily have let her go after he realized he captured her along with Stitch, but he chose not to. That one was on him. Gantu is by no means, a perfect guy ♂︎, he’s done evil stuff, some really shady stuff but is definitely not as evil as Hämsterviel. Most of the bad things he does in this movie and in the TV series is because of Hämsterviel, because he’s ordering him to do those things and really doesn’t have much a choice, since he’s both marooned on a planet that isn’t his and he can’t just go seek other forms of employment since no one else will take him to due to stain on his record due to what happened in the first movie. Whereas in the first movie, the bad things he did were because of his ego, because he got cocky and it went to his head, and also because he hated Stitch so much that he was willing to do anything to capture him, even if it that meant hurting or even killing a little human girl ♀︎. He also didn’t really value the lives of human beings, and saw them as lesser beings than himself. And frankly, neither did the Grand Councilwoman ♀︎ since she was perfectly willing to gas the planet 🌎, and basically commit mass genocide in the process, just to try to kill Stitch, and then wanting to just kill any of the experiments after they were all scattered across different points around the island of Kaua‘i. 

 

On both occasions of the Grand Councilwoman ♀︎ expressing her bloodthirstiness, she had to be talked out of it by people who had more of a moral conscience compared to her and viewed human beings as a species worth protecting and saving, Pleakley and Lilo. Pleakley, when he talked her out of sterilizing Earth 🌎 by literally gassing it with a chemical weapon ☣️, was really only concerned about the mosquito population 🦟 since he fully bought into the lie by Cobra Bubbles that mosquitoes 🦟 were an endangered species and that Earth 🌎 was a protected nature preserve. He would come to value human life later on after he and Jumba are essentially exiled here by the Grand Councilwoman ♀︎, and they basically become Lilo’s adoptive uncles. Her crazy alien uncles 👽. 

 

And also because he learned a little bit more about himself while on that failed mission to capture Stitch in the first movie, as he gained appreciation for human clothes, female human clothes ♀︎ that is, and apparently Nani’s clothes specifically since this movie confirms that he likes trying on her clothes when she’s not looking. She obviously catches him in the act, since she spots him wearing her favorite shirt in the scene after she and David return home from a date. She claims it wasn’t a date, but it was, for all intents and purposes, a real date. While, Lilo here is concerned about the other 623 experiments because she sees them as Stitch’s family, his cousins, and she wants to preserve that so that Stitch can have a family and not feel like he’s alone or that he’s the only one of his kind. Plus, her kind and forgiving nature prevents her from considering death as the only solution to a problem individual. She believes in second chances, she believes in rehabilitation, as opposed to just killing bad people or bad creatures in this case. So, she wants to keep the other experiments alive, and hopefully rehabilitate them and find the one place where they truly belong. 

 

This movie does do a good job at expanding upon the concept of ‘ohana, and showing that it doesn’t just extend to your own family, your blood relatives 🩸, it extends to everyone, everyone in your community, and even outside of it. This is much closer to the actual meaning of ‘ohana in the Hawaiian language and culture. It takes a village to raise a child and all that. Native Hawaiians believe that everyone is apart of one big happy family, and they refer to everyone as “cousins,” even if they aren’t actually their cousins, and this movie does a good job at introducing that concept to non-Native Hawaiians, people who are not of that culture. Before Chief of War was even a thing, this franchise was people’s only real exposure to Hawaiian culture and the Hawaiian language, even if most of is still in English. You know, at least until they started moving it over to Japan 🇯🇵, and later China 🇨🇳 in later spinoff series, foreign made spinoff series that are of, let’s just say, dubious quality 🤨. 

 

But, even before that, the franchise as a whole did start to downplay the Hawaiian cultural aspects, putting less emphasis on them and making them less important and putting more emphasis on the sci-fi and alien stuff 👽. I mean, I like sci-fi stuff, I like alien stuff 👽, but I also like the Hawaiian stuff too, and I wish that the franchise hadn’t downplayed it so much. Even with the 2025 live action remake, we’re still not getting an authentic view of Hawaiian culture like we did in the 2002 original, we’re getting a very distorted view through a corporate lens and tourism-friendly. The anti-colonialist message and social commentary is completely absent from the franchise, it’s been completely stripped away because Disney has a resort in O‘ahu, and they don’t want to risk offending any tourists, especially white tourists. So, they removed anything from the franchise that would possibly make them uncomfortable. Making the 2025 movie more of a corporate product than the original. But, even in the original, a lot of more blatant examples of the anti-colonialist and racial and social commentary were removed and left on the cutting room floor. The message is still there, but it’s a lot more subtle than what Chris Sanders or Dean DeBlois had intended. 

 

But, this stripping away of the anti-colonialist and anti-tourism themes really began with this movie, and continued on into the series and in the two foreign spinoffs/reboots, the anime and the donghua, which is the Chinese equivalent to anime 🇨🇳. But, even without that, this movie does still give us some Hawaiian culture, so do the TV series and the other two movies prior to the anime and the donghua. A lot more than other movies and TV shows did, especially American ones 🇺🇸, which is ironic since Hawai‘i is an American state 🇺🇸, it is in fact the 50th state and the last state to added to the Union. And yet, we get so little about the culture and language of the indigenous people that live there, that lived there for thousands of years in the movies and TV shows we watch or video games that we play. And even if we do, it’s usually not very authentic. Lilo & Stitch gave us our first taste of authentic Hawaiian culture. It effectively paved the way for a show like Chief of War to get made in the first place.

 

Chief of War hasn’t even come out yet at the time of this writing, it premieres on August 1, 2025, which is on a Friday, on Apple TV+. Although, in this case, when it comes the other experiments created by Jumba (on behalf of Hämsterviel), they are more Stitch’s cousins in a more literal sense they are sort of genetically related to him 🧬 and were literally meant to be prototypes of him. They were prototypes before Jumba got to Stitch (or Experiment 626 as he was still called), who he considered his finest creation, the pinnacle of his scientific achievements. Of course, he does mention the idea of making a 627th experiment, which I don’t think actually happens, or at least, Jumba isn’t the one to do it. Hämsterviel creates the 627th experiment, Leroy, the main antagonist (or I guess secondary antagonist since Hämsterviel is still the main antagonist) of Leroy & Stitch. 

 

While I am talking about the other experiments, I really did like Sparky, I thought he was pretty cool. I liked his electrical powers ⚡️, they were a nice contrast to Stitch’s general abilities like super strength, durability, invincibility, night vision, venom tipped back spikes, acid saliva apparently, and intelligence, and his design is pretty cool. I like all the designs of the experiments, and we get to see a lot more of them in the series, which I’ll get later on, once I’m done watching it. After I start watching it that is. And I liked Experiment 625, soon to be named Reuben, he’s a funny character and a great foil to Gantu. They have this very oil and water 💦 buddy cop dynamic together, and I’m here for it. Just like with the designs of the other experiments, we get to see more of them in the series. 

 

I was surprised at how many of the characters from the first movie were included in this, because pretty much everybody is back. Even Cobra Bubbles and the Grand Councilwoman ♀︎, as I’ve made it clear already, and they both play pivotal roles in the story, but the Grand Councilwoman ♀︎ doesn’t appear until much later on in the movie, almost to the end. They even got Ving Rhames back to reprise his role as Cobra Bubbles, or at least a really good soundalike. And that part where Lilo and Stitch jack his car (which is apart of this running gag where Stitch keeps hot-wiring vehicles and spaceships including Jumba’s ship) to try to look for Sparky was pretty funny, especially when the part where Lilo and Stitch put some of his sunglasses 🕶️ and try to show off and look cool 😎 in front of Mertle and her friends. I love how Cobra Bubbles just keeps spare sunglasses 🕶️ in his glove compartment, almost as he’s prepared in case his shades 🕶️ get destroyed, which has happened on at least occasions. Guy ♂︎ can’t go anywhere without his sunglasses 🕶️. Even though, as far as I know, Cobra Bubbles really doesn’t play that big of a role in the series going forward. Neither does the Grand Councilwoman ♀︎. But this does further cement his association with extraterrestrials 👽, and the Grand Councilwoman ♀︎ specifically, since she’s the one who he calls for help to deal with both Gantu and Hämsterviel. 

Hämsterviel is a pretty good villain though. He’s evil, but he’s also funny. Like, that part where Pleakley is calling all those numbers, and ends up calling the number to the cell where Jumba is being held, and then Hämsterviel answers and gives a ransom order is pretty funny. He’s a funny villain, but his funniness doesn’t detract from his menace. He is still a bad guy, and he is still pretty capable of doing some pretty evil things, in fact, he goes full Bond villain here, by chaining Stitch to a table and almost cutting him in half with a laser, a laser which he claims will clone him. He was already thinking about creating Leroy, or at least, something like Leroy before Leroy & Stitch made it a reality. In a way, he’s sort of like Zurg from the Buzz Lightyear of Star Command series (and the movie, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins), where he’s a funny villain, he can be hilarious and entertaining, but not in a way that in a way detracts from his menace or his threat level. Just like that version of Zurg (voiced eloquently by Wayne Knight, yes, that Wayne Knight, the same Wayne Knight who played Newman in Seinfeld and Dennis Nedry in Jurassic Park), Hämsterviel is a serious threat and can be a real challenge to the good guys, even when he can be funny or even while he is being funny. Not in a Joker kind of way mind you, more of in a Bond villain sort of way, where they’re pretty over-the-top and lack any sort of self-awareness about how ridiculous they are, or are just constantly confronted with minor inconveniences or obstacles that get in the way of their villainy. 

 

In Hämsterviel’s case, it’s his height (he’s really short), it’s people misidentifying his species (calling him a gerbil when he’s actually a hamster 🐹), and it’s people mispronouncing his name (there’s a running joke both in this movie and in the series about people mispronouncing his name and calling him Hämsterwheel instead of Hämsterviel and him getting really pissed off about it 🤬). But he still loses in the end, because of his ego, and because of his pride, and because he’s the villain and villains always lose, and he has incompetent people working for him. Gantu and Reuben aren’t exactly the most ideal henchmen, Hämsterviel is kind of just taking what he can get. 

 

It’s a shame neither him nor Gantu were included or even mentioned in Lilo & Stitch (2025). I half expected them include an after credit scene with him in it, since that’s such a modern movie thing to do, but no, they just excluded him and Gantu and made Jumba the main bad guy instead 😒. Though, I wouldn’t doubt that they’d put in the sequel, him and Gantu, because like with the upcoming Mortal Kombat II (2025), I feel like they’re just going to do everything that they should’ve done in the first one in the sequel. People might like the sequel more than the first one, but that still won’t necessarily mean that it’s good. The recent first trailer to Mortal Kombat II (2025) will be the subject of my next post after this. 

 

The interesting thing about Hämsterviel is that there was a character in the Lilo & Stitch video game, Disney’s Stitch: Experiment 626, called Habbitrale, who was like Hämsterviel, only he was more or a rabbit 🐇 instead of a hamster 🐹, hence the name, Habbitrale. I even thought it was Hämsterviel for a while, until I learned recently that they were separate characters and that character featured in the game was called Habbitrale, Dr. Habbitrale. But, that game was quickly retconned by both this movie and Lilo & Stitch 2, and Habbitrale was replaced by Hämsterviel, and the rest is history.