NOTE: Please do not take any of the little nitpicks in this review (or any of my other reviews, for that matter) seriously. I write these reviews in the hopes of making people laugh. Those nitpicks are really just dumb little observations that I'm attempting to make jokes out of, not complaints that add to whether or not I like something.
NOTE #2: No disrespect is meant towards anyone who worked on the show I am reviewing today. I'm sure they are all very nice and talented people.
NOTE #3: If you like this show, that is great. Go ahead and like it. I'm not judging you.
I remember when Lilo and Stitch came out. I remember seeing it in theaters. I remember the bonus features on the DVD. I remember my sister having a Lilo doll. Lilo and Stitch was one of the only Disney movies of the 2000s to be considered (by the company itself, at least) a box office success. And you know what THAT meant, right?
ANSWER: it meant that they had a new cash cow.
And boy howdy were they going to take advantage of that - ESPECIALLY at the Disney theme parks. Well, at Walt Disney World anyway, I don't know if they did this at Disneyland too. Stitch received his own attraction in 2004 at the Magic Kingdom, Stitch's Great Escape. I never went on it, but apparently it was really bad, and it has since been shut down. Disney, however, was really proud of the attraction, because they promoted it perhaps more than they've promoted any other attraction in the resort's history... there were signs all over the park, Stitch stickers were pasted on the windows of the monorail, they even vandalized Cinderella Castle. Look at this:
And on top of THAT, somehow Stitch became the sixth member of Mickey's group of friends. On merchandise, he'd be included alongside Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, and Pluto and he stuck out like a sore thumb. Eventually, the company calmed down on Stitch, but he was practically the mascot of Disney for a while.
Outside the parks, Disney kept the Stitch train a-chuggin' along with merchandise and direct-to-video sequels. He received three, the first of which was Stitch! The Movie. Kind of a weird thing to call a film's direct-to-video sequel, seeing as the name of the first movie was Lilo and Stitch. So this one is just Stitch? It's like if they made a sequel to Turner and Hooch and called it Turner! The Movie.
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| I've heard that the ACTUAL Lilo and Stitch direct-to-video sequel that came after this one, Lilo and Stitch 2: Stich Has a Glitch, is better. The fourth one, Leroy and Stitch, is apparently the weakest of the Stitch movies. |
The name makes a little more sense if you know that Stitch! The Movie was actually just a feature-length pilot for the Lilo and Stitch TV show that Disney was making, which was going to be called Stitch! The Series at first before they decided to call it Lilo and Stitch: The Series instead.
This show, developed by Bobs Gannaway and Jess Winfield, premiered on September 20th, 2003. It was basically Disney's answer to Pokemon - Stitch's name, before Lilo found him, was Experiment 626, right? So that means that his creator, Dr. Jumbaa Jookiba, made 625 experiments BEFORE he made him, right? Thus, the show had Lilo (once again voiced by Daveigh Chase) and Stitch (once again voiced by Chris Sanders) chasing after all the other experiments that Jumbaa (David Ogden Stiers) created, which were stored in tiny ping pong balls that would free them when contact was made with some sort of liquid. Along for the ride were Lilo's big sister Nani (Tia Carrere), Jumbaa, and the one-eyed former Galactic Federation agent Pleakley (Kevin McDonald). The show received two seasons, making for a total of sixty-five episodes.
I remember watching the show when it was on, but to be honest, I don't think it holds up very well. Apparently, executive meddling resulted in the charm of the film it was based on being tossed out the window in favor of zany, more lighthearted antics. The original film was pretty mellow and laid-back. You're not gonna find any tender moments like Stitch's speech about his family here. Nope, we have episodes about experiments that turn people into babies, crossovers with Kim Possible and American Dragon: Jake Long, and... well, just look at this:
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| This episode, by the way, has a really heavy-handed moral about healthy eating. Yes, it's one of THOSE shows... |
The characters got Flanderized as well, most notably Pleakley. In the original movie, he was intelligent (he just didn't quite understand humans) and tried his best to keep the bombastic Jumbaa in line. In the show, he's now a massive idiot who exists so that the writers can make jokes at the expense of gay people. I shouldn't have to say this... somebody being gay is not a joke. Making fun of people for not being straight is wrong, okay? In fact, television shows' mockery of gay people is likely a reason why homophobes are still a thing.
All right, all right, let's get on with the actual review. We'll be watching the third episode, "Clip". As they say in Hawaii, E hoʻomaka kākou! Thank goodness for Google Translate...
