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I've mentioned in the past that I'm generally immune to the charms of animated films, but the last two years have been singularly fruitful for the feature-length cartoon, and 2002's "Lilo & Stitch" joins such esteemed colleagues as "Shrek," "Monster's Inc.," and "Ice Age" in getting and keeping my publicity. "Lilo & Stitch" may not splendour all the innovation or humor of the aforementioned cartoons, but it's got almost as much charm and enchantment. If you're an adult with no children, I'm betting you'll find it a safe rental; if you've got kids, it's a requisite buy.

Oddly, I didn't start out eye the picture. The opening sequence, deposit in a faraway galaxy, looked rather ordinary in its verve, the simple line drawings conjuring up little magnetic for me and the from characters looking like retreads from the cantina spot in "Star Wars." What's more, I could decide at a glance exactly where the story line was prevalent and how the overlay would end up from my first some minutes of watching it. It wasn't until the whodunit moved to Soil that both the animation brand and the characterizations picked up. From that characteristic on, it didn't matter that the plot was predictable. The prospect was so lush and attractively rendered and the action so involving that I was caught up in the movie, anyway.

I'd have to style "Lilo & Stitch" as a lovable sci-fi punt, and I ambition that doesn't scare out of one's wits away too many older viewers. The animation has enough visual delights to keep most any age group interested, and the sentiments expressed, corny or not, are honest and heartfelt.

Things begin in a distant celebrated gathering where a mad scientist ("I prefer to be called 'Evil Genius'"), Dr. Jumba (voiced by David Ogden Stiers), is on trial respecting creating the first of a new species of wonderful creatures, Experiment 626. The pint-sized critter looks like a four-armed Tasmanian archfiend, and he's more than enough employing. He's been engineered to be bulletproof and fireproof and to come up with faster than a supercomputer. Furthermore, he can finance in the evil and have an or a profound effect on objects 3,000 times his size. Trouble is, his only instinct is to destroy everything he touches, so the advanced civilization to which Dr. Jumba belongs wants the monster terminated and Dr. Jumba penalized for his wrongdoing. The fruit of the headache is that the creature is to be banished to a deserted asteroid and Dr. Jumba imprisoned.

But nothing is easy. Aboard a spaceship on his way to the asteroid, the creature escapes and finds his velocity to the remote planet World, landing in the Hawaiian Islands. Dr. Jumba, with the assistance of an cause named Pleakley (Kevin McDonald), is asked to bring the creature back in exchange in compensation his freedom.

Quick lower to Hawaii and a adroit little friend named Lilo (Daveigh Chase), who turns out to be not your representative, innocent little Disney filly full of sweetness and light. She's a bright, gutsy, fully independent dwarf lover, whose disposition and singular behavior (voodoo is at one of her hobbies) don't faultlessly put her in good stead with her peers. As a consequence, she has no assiduous friends. Plus, she has no parents and is living with an older sister and paladin, Nani (Tia Carrere), Deo volente the sexiest female character the Disney studios from ever offered up in one of their children's tales.

As you may have guessed, Lilo finds the alien creature (who has wound up in an animal umbrella after being fail over by a truck and is without delay disguising himself as a particularly malign-looking dog) and takes it home as a pet, naming it Stitch. They're a superlative pair, and it's hard to tell who's the tougher of the two. Figuring this is as good a dodge as any to avoid capture by Jumba, Stitch goes along with the gag. From then on it's a step on it to brood over whether Jumba is going to find Stitch, whether Stitch is prevalent to learn to be nice from his association with nice people (what do you think?), and whether a public services officer, Mr. Bubbles (Ving Rhames, voicing a character who looks just sort him), is affluent to take Lilo away from Nani. "Did you ever a wooden kimono anyone?" Lilo asks him. Knock down in Nani's playmate, David (Jason Scott Lee), and after all another immigrant from Stitch's world looking to find Stitch in the past Jumba and Pleakley awaken to him, and you've got a fairly complex narrative for a Disney story.

There are a number of cute touches from one end to the other the covering. For example, the aliens view Earth as a worthless hunk of actual estate and consider destroying the whole correct in command to eliminate Stitch, but Pleakley reminds them the planet is being used to rebuild an near extinction species, the mosquito, which feeds mistaken the native humans. The human race is necessary for the survival of the mosquito; wonderful. Or when Jumba and Pleakley front themselves as a mortal couple and it's commented that Pleakley's fountain-head looks dropsical: "Actually, she's just ugly," responds Jumba. Or when Lilo finds Stitch helpful in playing phonograph records, using one of his claws for a needle and his orifice for an amplifier.

"Wastes a
captivating original premise and some fine performances with a stiff script
and a cop-out ending."

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Robert Florey ("Murders in the Rue Morgue") ably directs this stylish
gothic horror Warner Brothers film; the screenplay is by Curt Siodmak,
who based it on the story by William Fryer Harvey. Max Steiner offers a
florid score, while Wesley Anderson provides some uniquely striking photography
shot at odd angles. The action is set in the small village of San Stefano,
in the Italian Alps, and takes place around 1896. 

It, unfortunately, wastes a captivating original premise and some
fine performances with a stiff script and a cop-out ending, supposedly
imposed by the studio, that makes the ghost story into a mere hallucination.

Francis Ingram (Victor Francen) is a world-famous pianist who is
paralysed from a stroke and confined to a wheelchair, and also has one
hand crippled. The grumpy, wealthy, American ex-patriate lives in a creepy
spacious mansion where he has employed for the last year the sweet nurse
Julie Holden (Andrea King), whom he has grown very fond of and dependent
on to handle his eccentric whims. Besides the three servants staying at
the mansion, there's Ingram's scholarly secretary for the last twenty years,
Hilary Cummins (Peter Lorre), who lives for Ingram's library that contains
the best books on astrology since the ancient library in Alexandria burned
down. Hilary is an obsessed lunatic trying to unlock the keys to the future
that the ancient astrologers knew. The American artist and musical composer
Conrad Ryler (Robert Alda) is a frequent visitor to the mansion, who has
let his career go to seed to become a witty sychophant living off handouts
from Ingram, hustling him into betting on chess games, and conning tourists
to buy phony antiques.

The inquisitive police chief, Commissario Ovidio Castanio (J. Carrol
Naish), tells Conrad that Julie plans to leave Ingram's employment, being
that she has just applied for an exit visa. Conrad confronts her, and she
tells him she's bored silly taking care of her impossible patient. After
telling Julie that he loves her, Conrad urges her to either stay or leave
without telling Ingram. Otherwise, he insists the cripple will pull the
pity act to get her to feel so sorry for him that she will end up staying.
That evening they are invited to dinner at Ingram's, as he needs them as
witnesses to attest that he's of sound mind because he's changing his will.
Also, asked to be witnesses are Hilary and Ingram's lawyer Duprex (David
Hoffman). Later after playing a Bach arrangement, influenced by Conrad,
with his good hand and afterwards trying to strangle Hilary with the same
good hand for dissing Julie and saying she's messing around with Conrad
in the garden, Ingram accidently tumbles down the long-winding staircase
and dies (though there's the possibility he was pushed by Hilary, still
seething that he was asked to leave the residence and his books). 

The new will is read by Duprex, and besides those already mentioned
Ingram's closest relatives arrive, Americans by way of England, his grasping
repugnant brother-in-law Raymond Arlington (Charles Dingle) and his equally
dislikable son Donald Arlington (John Alvin). When Julie inherits the whole
works, the Arlingtons go into a snit and threaten to contest the will.
The Arlingtons spook Hilary out, saying if they inherit the estate they
will not allow him to keep the books–to make matters worse they insult
him and rub it in that they plan to sell all of Ingram's assets to the
highest bidder in an auction.

Hilary overhears Duprex as he conspires with the Arlingtons, telling
them that he made out an older will for Ingram that has them inheriting
the estate and will locate it for them. But that evening before Duprex
can deliver that will, he is strangled by a disconnected hand thought to
belong to the corpse of Ingram. That severed hand, that made its way out
of the coffin, plays the ivories like only Ingram can, which leads to speculation
that it's a ghost that's responsible for the murder.

At that point the film is marvelously effective as a supernatural
chiller. What remains unforgettable is Lorre's fascinatingly demented performance,
the severed hand strangling with the same hand it beautifully plays the
piano with, and the dismembered hand walking around the mansion, looking
for its next vic. The hand is a creation of the imaginative "special effects"
department. The absurd ending is creation of some hack executives over
at Warner Brothers.