[kelly]

Review without spoilers:

1. This movie ruled. Best Disney film in years. Go see it.
2. DLP and animation were made for each other. Awesome.

 

[Nezer]

Isn't Lilo the Linux boot-loader?

 

[RMSzero]

I was kind of wondering about this one. From the preview I was worried that it would be like Jar Jar & Ethnic Slur but I guess it isn't, which is good.

 

[jlo mein]

jar jar =

 

[Russ Arcuri]

Brought the kids to see it today. It was GREAT. Lots of laughs for adults and kids alike.

 

[grinch]

short review: i thought it sucked. disney should really stick to animals and jungles and king arthur times and characters, not their modern-take on humans.

1. animation was decent, although their space stuff kinda sucked in my opinion. anybody who's seen titan ae can probably agree with me there.
2. i think the lilo character should've been a year or two older, maybe then they could've used a little girl with a voice not quite as annoying.
3. ving rhames was great (as most always, in my opinion)
4. the ethnicity of every character boggled the hell out of me (cept for the ving rhames character). i figured, in hawaii.. they might be hawaiian. however, a quick check on imdb shows that jason scott lee and tia carrere did the main guy/girl characters and they're asian (as far as i can tell, especially from their previous roles as bruce lee and wayne's girlfriend heh). i guess that's just the price we pay for society being as petty and whiney as it is: this movie is as pc as you can get, i don't think it could offend a mosquito
   
5. the plot was garbage. unoriginal, boring, not explored, etc. i'll keep the spoilers out of it.
6. the soundtrack was good. i can really enjoy a good hawaiian/beach themed soundtrack.
7. elvis (young) is great.

that pretty much completes my list of gripes/compliments. although, i'll add my list of disney movies that you should see instead!: mulan, emperor's new groove, hercules, anything before hunchback of notre dame..

and don't forget the good pixar flicks: toy story 1/2 and a bug's life (monsters inc. also sucked, in my opinion although the animation was unbelievable)

 

[skippy]

as far as i know, tia carerra is from hawaii.

 

[grinch]

heh, oops. don't i feel sheepish.

http://us.imdb.com/Name?Carrere,+Tia

http://us.imdb.com/Name?Lee,+Jason+Scott

they're both from hawaii. and boy does her real name scream hawaii. either way, the movie still sucked!

 

[kelly]

I'm trying so hard to agree with people! (See RKV thread for recent examples!)

Dammit.

Ok, no, I don't agree with Grinch at all. I feel it's pretty damned appropriate for the Hawaiian people in Hawaii to be Hawaiian and I don't think it was an act of political correctness. I thought the social worker character was great and I don't think his being black was issue either way. The tourists were all white which I thought was funny (and was supposed to be--the little girl, Lilo, early in the film had a hobby of taking pictures of tourists).

The characterization in this film for me was spot on. I related really well to the Lilo character as I suppose she's not all that different than I remember myself being as a kid. The situation was believably real enough to make me think Disney was courageous for putting out such a film. I've known kids seperated by social workers and the conflicts in the film were very real for me.

This was also the hardest I've laughed in a film in a long time--the last film I remember coming close was Something About Mary.

 

[pigmode]

I'm sure it's a good movie, but I'm just not interested in any Hollywood characterizations of my birthplace.

 

[grinch]

Quote:

Originally posted by kelly Ok, no, I don't agree with Grinch at all. I feel it's pretty damned appropriate for the Hawaiian people in Hawaii to be Hawaiian and I don't think it was an act of political correctness. I thought the social worker character was great and I don't think his being black was issue either way. The tourists were all white which I thought was funny (and was supposed to be--the little girl, Lilo, early in the film had a hobby of taking pictures of tourists).

i kinda got misunderstood there, big suprise considering how horrible a writer i am, but anyway. i too think it is appropriate for people in hawaii to be hawaiian, but the characters just didn't seem hawaiian at all to me. maybe i haven't known many hawaiians, but they just looked so bland and in the middle to me. i was saying it politically correct because the characters didn't really put forth any stereotypes that i would figure to be hawaiian. i guess that's a good thing? but it just bothered me a bit. the way the humans were drawn too really just threw me off. if you're going to draw a human, draw a human.. don't draw a woman with legs double as wide as her shoulders. the alien characters were pretty creative looking though. and why the hell did they put real video onto the tv's in the store window?!? SUCK.

the other thing that mainly bothered me is the fact that disney is now resorting to booger and fart jokes. gimme a break. i guess our children really are that dumb.

i did laugh a few times and the kid i was with thought it was great, but overall i was not impressed. next time i'll just pop in my alice in wonderland dvd and save myself the ten bucks..

 

[Russ Arcuri]

Quote:

Originally posted by grinch ...maybe i haven't known many hawaiians, but they just looked so bland and in the middle to me. i was saying it politically correct because the characters didn't really put forth any stereotypes that i would figure to be hawaiian...

Hmmm... I'm really not sure what you're looking for there. These were not typical Disney stick-figure women... they actually had the wider hips and 'not flat' stomachs normally associated with the stereotypically "Hawaiian" physique. The main characters were employed in a Hawaiian stage show/restaurant. Quote:

...if you're going to draw a human, draw a human.. don't draw a woman with legs double as wide as her shoulders.

I liked this too. You can draw people one of two ways -- either try for ultimate realism, which is, IMO, boring. Or you can accentuate certain features, not to the point of caricature, but simply to emphasize them. If I was drawing a Hawaiian woman as a cartoon (and if I had any artistic ability whatsoever) I'd probably accentuate hips and legs too.

Did it bother you that the human characters in Hercules had pointy parts where real humans don't? It's just an artistic choice -- the 'style' of the animation, so to speak. Quote:

and why the hell did they put real video onto the tv's in the store window?!? SUCK.

grinch, I'm not sure what to say here. It's almost like you're striving to find things to criticize. Until you mentioned it here, I hadn't really thought about it. But I was pretty much indifferent to that -- it didn't bother me, and it didn't bother anyone else I know that saw the movie. Quote:

the other thing that mainly bothered me is the fact that disney is now resorting to booger and fart jokes.

WHAT??? Name one. I don't remember a single joke that would qualify as a "booger" or "fart" joke. Did we watch the same movie??? It is entirely possible that I'm simply forgetting them, but even if there were any it's not like they were emphasized or memorable. I really can't recall a single one right now.

 

[kelly]

Russ
My theory is that grinch bought a ticket to Lilo & Stitch but walked into the Scooby Doo theater.

Don't get me wrong, I liked the fart jokes in Scooby Doo.

Anyway, I think grinch's arguments are pretty.... off. The Hawaiian characters were portrayed pretty well, I thought. I only know a handful of Hawaiian people and have only actually been once so I don't mean to seem like the expert in Hawaiian culture or anything, but I didn't see anything that made me think they were either exploiting their stereotypes or bending to political correctness. It was pretty balanced, I thought.

The TV thing wasn't a distraction for me, either.

I realize there's a lot of anti-Disney sentiment but aside from that it's hard to imagine anyone disliking this movie.

 

[grinch]

Quote:

Originally posted by kelly Russ My theory is that grinch bought a ticket to Lilo & Stitch but walked into the Scooby Doo theater.

no, i did that last week (sadly). actually, i didn't think it was that bad. the direction and characters were great, i think it's just the fact that nobody is used to seeing something like that. they portrayed the movie EXACTLY like the show, no matter how stupid it might be. but that's another thread..

i was sick on sunday, maybe this had something to do with no enjoying the film as everybody else but i still don't rate it very high on disney's scale of films.

i guess i'm the only one who recalls stitch sticking his tongue into his nose and then eating the contents which appeared at the end of it. the rest of the stupid "slapstick" humor i just dump into the "booger and fart joke" category because it's about as creative as it. watch toy story, or mulan, or hercules and tell me that the dialogue and delivery from the characters isn't much more funny and clever.

don't get me wrong, i love disney. i've been watching disney movies ever since i could open my eyes. my mother still has every movie on vhs still in close-to-mint condition, which i understand means they're worth some money now. anyway, i'm trying to say i grew up on the stuff. the classics, before disney started releasing crappy sequels directly to video (lion king 2-9, aladdin 2, etc.). i also own every animated disney film available on dvd up to this point (cept for a few of the recent suckfest ones). i grew up in florida, about a four hour drive from orland which means i have been to disney world more times than any kid could ever dream of wanting to go. every park, every ride, etc. i am not anti-disney. i hope this proves as much. i just think the movie sucked.

and after almost forty animated features, after watching all of them for over twenty years, they decided up and out of the blue to add real video to one of them. i guess seems like a cheesey and dumb complaint to all of you but i just never imagined it would happen. i hate change. i'm a weirdo, what can i say?

maybe i just have bad taste or maybe i'm just too in love with the classics. i wish i could've enjoyed the movie more than i did but it didn't happen. oh well. i'll probably pre-order it on dvd the second i can anyway..

 

[kelly]

grinch
I have about 15 Disney animated films on LD, including the ones that haven't made it to DVD yet. On DVD, I have about 20. So I'm missing handful--especially the direct to videos but have almost all the theatrically released ones.

Unlike you, it seems, I've been underwhelmed with the later films. Your mention of Hercules points that out. I didn't care for the style, the dialog or the humor in Hercules and the anachronistic jokes of every film since Beauty & the Beast has bugged me, even when Robin Williams did it.

With Lilo & Stitch, I did like the animation style. Every Disney film is stylized so if you like any of them, it's pretty hard to argue anything but taste. I hated Hercule's art style, I had mixed feelings about Atlantis, I loved the Beauty & the Beast and Hunchback's. And I really loved Sleeping Beauty's.

I felt that the simplistic style and exaggerated legs, hands and feet of the characters in Lilo reflected the segment of modern American art style that's being influenced heavily by manga and anime. For another great example of this influence, check out Frank Miller's Dark Knight 2. It was almost to be expected that this type of style would be chosen for a story surrounding modern Asian-Americans. I don't think Mulan's style would have mated so well with this story.

I can understand how someone might feel insulted that Disney has begun to resort to least common denominator humor for some of the quick jokes in Lilo, but the two points I would make is that this is that every Disney animated film since Aladdin has done so and that Lilo's was no more excessive than the others.

The real change that Disney's film did take with Lilo & Stitch was the introduction of using situation as a villain. There isn't a real Maleifcent or Cruella DeVille type villain in this story. And there isn't a stereotypical big chested hero to save the day, either. The villain of the story is that two parentless sisters may be seperated from each other by child protective services due entirely to the situation. This to me is the most striking change in Disney and makes me wonder if it reflects a more modern change. I hope to see more of this in the future. I have enough black & white good and evil cartoons in my vault.