Lilo & Stitch: The Series

Cafe Society
1

Okay, I’m really enjoying this series a lot more than I should, seeing as how I’m all old and everything.

The premise is that Stitch (experiment 626) isn’t the only one of the mad scientist’s evil experiments to hit Earth; the other 625 are touching down in Hawaii. Water activates them, and Lilo & Stitch have to work together to capture the experiment and find a better purpose for it.

The show is definitely lower-budget than the movie, obviously, and the movie itself wasn’t a huge production, but it’s got higher production values than most animated series. The backgrounds are all the watercolor style of the movie, and the character designs and animation are really, really good. In particular, there’s at least one new experiment each episode, and they’re all well-designed, including the design consideration that they all look like relatives of Stitch.

Plus, all of the voices from the movie are used in the series, a great touch. Disney’s been doing a lot of promotion around a future episode which will feature the voices of all of the Kids in the Hall cast. Kevin McDonald does the voice of Pleakley as he did in the movie, and the other KiTH are going to “appear” as his relatives. (Scott Thompson has already made a cameo as Pleakley’s mother.)

Lilo & Stitch is my favorite of the Disney movies, and the photos shown over the end credits made me wish the movie would just keep on going. This series is a natural continuation fo the movie and they did a great job. Now I just need to find a kid to watch it with me.

2

My kid likes it, but it bugs me a bit – the 5 episodes I’ve seen all had the same premise: a new ‘pokemon’ (oops, ‘experiment’) appears every week, and L&S have to figure it out and defuse it. This seems less than original to me.

On characters: Stitch seems waaay less intelligent (recall that was a friggin supercomputer in the movie), Lilo is…off. Her girlish/childish concerns in the movie about acceptance w/ friends & having a whole family are now subsumed into her “mission” to look for expirements.

Noni is definitely off-character – L&S took a drive into a black hole, Noni showed up towards the end and seemed unconcerned that Pligly and (the scientist character – whathisname?) had let them do such a thing. Um, weren’t you the same mother-figure who freaked continually in the movie, worried about L ?

And why the $@#% isn’t the four-eyed scientist-guy a little more motivated to de-fang these experiments that keep popping up?!? He created them all, he knows what they can do, he knows how to shut them off. And he’s shown no compunction in the past about doing things like shooting big weapons downtown at his buddy 626. Why does he hover around like a toothless aunt ?

All that having been said: I do enjoy a lot of the humor (the plinkly sidetracks are quite fun sometimes), and the production values are usually darned good. And it really is great to see L&S again, they’re great to have around.

3

Oh, yeah – in another episode, Gomtu (sp?) shows up small enough to fit into Lilo’s living room. Wha?!?

(To be fair, I didn’t watch that whole show, maybe G went to Jenny Craig or something. :slight_smile: )

Yeah, I know – nitpicks…

As I said, I do love seeing more L&S. Whatever the inconsistencies.

4

Bump – nobody has seen this cartoon and has an opinion ?

Personally, I have issues with the show (see above), but it is very cool to have Stitch (or a reasonable facsimile) around s’more.

5

Slight hijack, but Disney World is revamping its Alien Encounter ride to have a Lilo and Stich theme. They started about a wek ago and should be finished some time next year. I’m not sure whether to be happy or not…I haven’t seen Lilo and Stitch, but I do know that Alien Encounter was a fun ride. Anyways, back to the non-hijacked posts.

6

Hey, I’ve seen the cartoon and have an opinion!

I still haven’t seen the pilot/intro episode, assuming there was one, but I’ve seen about five or six episodes now. I think that we’ve either seen different eps, or just have a different take on them because I don’t agree with your take on the show, squeegee.

You mention the characters’ being off, but one of the things I like so much about it is that I thought the characters were true to what they were like in the movie. I don’t remember Stitch’s being “hyperintelligent” in the movie; he was clever but like a child, making him a good sibling for Lilo. The series has done a great job of capturing that relationship; they play and talk and argue together just like real siblings. A few of the episodes I’ve seen so far have Lilo trying to fit in with Myrtle and the other girls in her hula class, so that’s still there – she’s not just catching experiments at the expense of everything else.

For Nani, in the episodes I’ve seen she’s been very much the mother figure (but still always on the verge of losing control, just as in the movie). She’s got the scientist and Pleakley to help out, but still lays the rules; in one episode she refused to let them all leave to catch the experiment until they repeated the House Rules. (“Treat Little Girl like delicate flower.”)

And the evil genius scientist (Jumba, thanks IMDB) is, well, still an evil genius, albeit reformed. When he hears about the experiments he describes them with a sense of pride. In the movie, he was only inspired to catch Stitch because his freedom depended on it; in the series he’s already free, and has that whole scientific detatchment from the whole process. Neat character for a kids’ series, IMO.

And the premise of the show is ingenious. I have to wonder if they conceived the movie with the series in mind. It didn’t even strike me as similar to Pokemon until you mentioned it. And I’m just a sucker for how everything ties together at the end of the ep, even if you can see it coming.

But to each his own. Like you said, I’m just glad to see more of the characters.

7

From Jumba, in the movie: “bulletproof, fireproof and can think faster than a supercomputer”

Please recall a couple of incidents from the movie: a) Stitch defeating a genetic gun via drool (yeah!) and escaping from the military ship via the ventilators in 2 minutes flat, b) Stitch seeing a poster of a little girl and dog and instantly hatches a plan to masquerade with Lilo, and c) Stitch holding a frog, seeing a tanker truck, and instantly deciding to drive it into a volcano, rip it open, and use the explosion to blast into Gomtu’s ship. Like I said, hyperintelligent.

Exactly. He was socially retarded – it took meeting Lilo, and seeing her need to fit in and missing her family, to make Stitch realize that he had no home, no place where he fit in. And he finally found his place as the missing piece of Lilo’s family. The part where he goes into the forest to wait for his “family”, and looks up and bleats “Lost!” always chokes me up. :slight_smile:

OK, I’m reassured. That sounds more like Nani. I guess I need to see a coupla more episodes.

Is David (Nani’s boyfriend wannabe) in the series ? I liked his clueless foil and Nani-pal role in the film, and his Hawaiian pidgin gems. :slight_smile:

As far as the Pokemon - my kid watches a lot of Pokemon lately, so the similarity was immediately clear for me. I hope they don’t do the “catch the expirement” thing on every L&S show. That’d be tiresome. They could do so many other things with Stitch – Send him to hula school or Graceland or something! Or maybe he hatches bizarre plans to help Lilo with her social issues with friends or school. Lotsa bent possibilities there.

8

Well, I saw what I believe is the pilot episode last night. They had David as a character, and they also had a scene showing Stitch’s “hyperintelligence,” where he uses a cafe map to calculate exactly where on the island an experiment landed. I think what they’re trying to get across is that Stitch has all this super-computer processing ability programmed into him, but he’s all id. (But then, in another episode they describe the team as Lilo’s the brains, and Stitch is the brawn – so it varies from writer to writer).

And they keep the central format of the series for structure, but switch it around so it’s not tiresome. In the few episodes they’ve shown so far, they’ve already done one that plays around with the format. Lilo tries to get Myrtle to be her friend by entering Stitch into a dog show in Honolulu; the loose experiment isn’t really mentioned until the end of the show, and it’s kind of a surprise. The premise of the show doesn’t really restrict what they can do. It’s like “Kim Possible” (yeah, I watch way too much kids’ TV), where all the episodes have the same basic premise but the writers manage to get a lot of mileage out of it.

I don’t want to think what the budget for this series is, though. It seems like there’s a lot more animation going into it than for other series, even good ones. I can only guess that they’re able to re-use a lot of animation from the movie.

And Duderdude – I’d heard that about the Alien Encounter ride, too, as a rumor. I think it’s a great idea. I love the characters from Lilo & Stitch, obviously, but I also thought that the Alien Encounter was a lousy attraction for a Disney park. It just seemed counter to everything Disney, and not in the good way. It was trying to be edgy and anti-Disney, doing stuff like introducing a cute character and then torturing it, but it just came off mean-spirited and obvious. Plus, I felt like after I’d seen it once, there was no need to see it again.

L&S is still anti-Disney formula, since the characters are all basically dysfunctional and Stitch is a real bastard. But IMO the characters are a lot more appealing than anything in Alien Encounter. Plus, Disney wins because they get to market Stitch stuff. I’m allowed to hijack threads that I start, right?

9

Ah come on SolGrundy, it wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t really torture, it was accidental, and it was humorous to boot, “Scruffy”, good times. Yeah, I’ll agree the attraction would be scary to children, but it had a happy ending, and I just really loved the entire thing. The animatronics were especially impressive, namely the robot that in the pre-show. Anyways, back once again to Lilo and Stitch posts.

10

Ha! That’s great, Stitch in a dog show! I gotta see that one. :slight_smile:

Anybody know what the Hawaiian in the opening song means? (I love the part where Stitch and the statues (tikis?) are barking the words at each other!)

Hmm, I wonder if that’s why Stitch doesn’t talk very much – Chris Sanders had limited availability.

11

OK, I saw a coupla more episodes with SqueegeeKid. I’m starting to really like this show. It’s just 30 minutes long and quite a bit of cheese factor, but it’s got darned good potential.

On the “Richter” episode, I loved the “Stitch is learning to take care of things he likes” subplot. Stitch kicks butt on another “expiriment”, but is horrified when his favorite orange toy ball is in danger, hugging it when it’s returned, just like a toddler. Very cute, and it echos something I liked about the L&S movie: Stitch’s paradoxical developed power and undeveloped social instincts, and the way Lilo tries to “mother him”, which sometimes results in bizarre scenes like the Elvis impersonations. Love it!

Same episode, Stitch and Richter exchange about 3 syllables and Jumba re-interprets this to about a paragraph of dialog for us. Pleakly: “Stitch’s language is very efficient!”, an obvious (and welcome) homage to the film. Nice. :slight_smile:

I also love the watercolor backgrounds that continue to be used. Lovely and a very different look for animation.

[Hijack]

Does Lilo ‘live’ in Hanalei town on Kauai ? It’s almost explicit that she lives on Kauai (we see a map in the movie with 626 landing there), and the scenery and flora seem to hint that Lilo lives on the north shore of that island, and the town Lilo lives in looks very Hanalei-ish to me. OTOH some of the Makai & Mauka shots in the movie make me think I’m on the south or west side of a (very lush) island, which would rule out Hanelei. Anyone?

[/hijack]

12

Franly, I wished that they’d revived Chip And Dale’s Rescue Rangers instead.

I see it as Disney’s finest made-fo-TV stuff.

13

The “pilot” is actually a direct to DVD movie that sets up the series. My 5-year-old was sooo pissed after we watched the movie and realized they didn’t find all of the cousins. Our lives are too episodic to catch every episode of the show, so he’s disappointed that he doesn’t get to meet all of the experiments.

14

Homebrew, I’m in the same situation with my daughter. I’ve tried setting up the (old) vcr to tape the episodes everyday, but I can’t get it to work. I think I’m gonna buy a new one just because of this show.

I loved the second movie and the series! ([Plinkly]Hello? Planet AAAaaaaahh?") My daughter and I spent all day on Columbus Day watching the first episodes of this series. I think the best part is that the “powers” the experiments have are so absurd sometimes - experiment 151 is “Babyfier” it disables planets by turning everyone into crybabies. Also, the “uses” Lilo finds for some of these experiments is funny. There is one that causes earthquakes and after they capture it, it’s put to work shaking milkshakes.

The episode where Gantu (“big stupid head”) is trying to blend in by wearing enormously ill-fitted Hawaiian shirt and shorts while standing 15 feet tall is hilarious! And Cobra Bubbles is still around and Myrtles’ friends (the three girls always hanging around her) only seem to know one word: “Yeeeaaahhh”.

I really enjoy this show!

15

There’s one where he says something like, “Curse you, experiment 626! I will find that abomination and wipe him from the face of this backwater planet!” and then noticing that some kids are watching, says, “I mean… I missed my bus!”

Later on, the same kids see him “in disguise,” and say, “Hey, it’s that guy who missed his bus!”