LILO & STITCH (2025)

This live-action remake earns its four stars honestly. It's funny, it's touching, and underneath the alien slapstick sits a genuinely moving story about a grieving little girl, an overwhelmed older sister, and a monster who learns what family means. The film keeps the original's heart — "Ohana" still means nobody gets left behind — and even adds a quiet current of answered prayer running through it.

It costs you very little. The comical violence is frequent but light, the language is barely there, and the film actually trims some of the murkier content from the 2002 original. The main tradeoff is craft, not conscience: the director sometimes shoots action too tight and cuts too fast, and the CGI alien doesn't always sit naturally next to the live actors.

Families who loved the cartoon will find a fun, faith-friendly companion piece. The only real caution is for your youngest — the chaos is loud and occasionally rough. Take the family; just know the littlest ones might need a hand to hold.

Lilo is six, orphaned, and lonely, living with her overwhelmed older sister Nani on a Hawaiian island where social services is watching closely. One night she prays for a friend who won't leave her. What answers that prayer is Experiment 626 — an illegal, nearly indestructible alien creature on the run from the Galactic Federation, who crash-lands nearby, gets mistaken for a dog, and gets adopted by Lilo under a new name: Stitch.

Four stars means this one delivers, and it does. The story lands its emotional beats — rescue, redemption, a lonely girl's love slowly reaching a creature built only for destruction — with real warmth. Where it stumbles is technical: the director, better known for the gentler Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, doesn't always know how to frame comedic action, shooting too close and cutting too often. The CGI creature also sits a little uneasily against the human cast, a reminder that this is an adaptation, not a replacement, for the animated version. None of that undercuts the film's charm — it just keeps a very good movie from being a flawless one.

This is a strongly pro-family film, and it earns that label. Lilo's prayer for a friend gets answered, Stitch's redemption plays like an allegorical death and resurrection, and the story insists — through a CIA agent who chooses mercy, a social worker who leads with grace, and a boss who regrets firing a good employee — that people (and aliens) are worth a second look before judgment. "Ohana" isn't just a tagline here; it's the film's whole argument.

One wrinkle is worth naming: Lilo's prayer is answered through a "wish on a falling star" that turns out to be a spaceship. It's a small blurring of prayer and superstition, though the film's overall trajectory — a cry for help, met with love — still points somewhere true.

Compared to the original, this version actually removes some murkier content, including evolution and voodoo references, leaving a cleaner, more straightforwardly redemptive story in their place.

Lilo's ache — for a friend who won't leave, for a family that holds — is an ache Scripture speaks to directly: "God settles the solitary in a home" (Psalm 68:6). This film gives that longing a spaceship and a wisecracking monster; the Bible gives it a Father.

This is a movie that trusts family, prayer, and second chances — and mostly earns that trust with a story worth your time. It stumbles a little in the shooting of its action scenes, but never in its heart. Our answer stands: worth the trip — some caution for younger children. Bring the popcorn, hold the little ones' hands through the loud parts, and enjoy.