Lilo & Stitch - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

In this profession, it's a little difficult to talk about a movie you adore with a measure of genuine objectivity. If it is a favorite, of course, you’re only going to focus on the good things and not give a damn about any narrative defects yada-yada-yada - I loved Lilo & Stitch! In 2002 I was just entering my 20s, I was in college taking writing and animation courses, and it was the last time that I felt like I could fully appreciate a new Disney animated feature on my own terms. It was a simpler time. A time when the combination of hand-drawn cel animation, watercolor backgrounds, and CGI accents could coexist for one bonkers, hilarious, highly entertaining, and heartfelt feature from Chris Sanders. 

Now I don’t really feel it’s necessary to go into the nitty-gritty plot details for Lilo & Stitch. It’s your classic mischievous alien lands on earth, little girl adopts alien, evil hunters try to catch alien, alien learns the meaning of “family” and saves the day film. We’ve seen it many times before. But we haven’t seen one quite so adorably cute and funny with some strikingly beautiful animation and a true gut-puncher of a resonating theme.  

Given the Hawaiian setting, it was an inspired choice to use watercolors for the animated backgrounds. It gives you that same warm, relaxing, and richly colorful vibe you feel as soon as you step off the plane to the Aloha state. At least I assume that’s the case since I’ve never been there. But I’ve heard tell about it! These beautiful backgrounds are populated with the shenanigans of a crazy alien, and two sisters just trying to make it in this crazy world with a little more rambunctious PG rating than the normal family-safe G rating. 

The point that I’m making is that Lilo & Stitch was a film made at a time when Disney was still willing to take risks with their material. This isn’t a princess film or a tribe of lions or a love-struck thief, it’s a little girl finding a friend… who happens to be a destructive alien creature from beyond the stars. This could have been all flash and whizbang, but Chris Sanders and co-director Dean DeBlois took all that excitement and slipped it into the container of a beautiful story about becoming a family. This was unlike anything the House of Mouse ever made before. Disney doesn’t often take big swings with their content anymore. The only risk they take today is plunking out billions for another IP they can milk to death and then squeeze it a little tighter until it’s all dried up. 

As I’m in my 40s now, I haven’t had much need or want to sit down and watch Lilo & Stitch again for many years. But now that I have a young son who actually wants to see movies like this, it’s good timing Disney dropped this film to 4K! After I had rewatched it again after so many years, the film still holds up, and the animation is still beautiful, but the theme resonated far more than I could have imagined. The “Ohana means family,” line always hits, but it hits harder in an era where a friend can have a tighter bond than a sister or a brother, and a mentor can mean more to you than a mother or father. That’s just a flowery way of saying this 22-year-old movie made me pretty damned weepy. 

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 
Lilo & Stitch crashes onto 2160p with a two-disc 4K UHD + Blu-ray + Digital release from Disney. The 4K is pressed on a BD66 disc with a BD50 serving the 1080p and bonus features. The discs are housed in a standard black two-disc case with identical beautiful slipcover art with raised features. The disc loads to an animated main menu with standard navigation options.

Lilo & Stitch enters the 2160p scene with a gorgeous 1.66:1 Dolby Vision transfer. At this time the blend of traditional cel animation and CGI elements was becoming more refined and cleaner. I was pleased to see these elements blend together so cohesively. Usually, the CGI elements could sort of “hover” or stand out, but I was pleased to see they felt right at home in higher resolution. I was most impressed with the eloquent Dolby Vision grading that lets the colors really pop beautifully without over-saturating the primaries. Those watercolor backgrounds look even more vibrant now. Character lines are clean with nice details. Looking back at both the Blu-ray and the 4K disc, that scene where Lilo hides from her sister features the updated version of the laundry table with the pizza box door instead of the dryer. Not sure when that change was made, again, it’d been years since I saw this film, but I know that’s been a point of contention for some folks. I don’t recall any other significant changes, at least nothing stood out from memory. All around a bright, bold, and colorful transfer.

On the audio front, the film comes home with a very fun Atmos audio track. Given the film, the more destruction on screen the more active and engaging the track becomes. The big space battles, plasma guns, and crashing waves have plenty of surround activity through the base channels and break nicely into the overheads. In the quieter scenes, the height channels have a more incidental presence than anything purposefully distinct. LFE gives some nice rumble for impacts and explosions and picks up more presence for the final act. Compared to the DTS-HD MA 5.1 track on the included Blu-ray, the Atmos is the clear and obvious winner.

Bonus content is a lot of the same old archival materials from yesteryear DVD releases. The best of the pack is still the great director and producer audio commentary as Sanders, DeBlois, and Spencer get into a lot of detail about the creative process as the film came together during production, animating, and the final edit. Everything else is just fluffy filler of little consequence. Looking at the music videos, it’s an honest-to-god miracle we made it out of the late '90s and early 2000s, that cover of Can't Help Falling In Love is terrifying. Frustratingly, the audio commentary is only on the included Blu-ray, but it’s worth the time. 

Blu-ray Disc 

• Audio Commentary featuring Chris Sanders, Dean DeBlois, and Clark Spencer
• Hula Lesson (SD 3:36)
• Animating the Hula (SD 3:04)
• DisneyPedia: Hawai’i - The Islands of Aloha (SD 8:46 Total)
• The Big Island of Hawai’i
• Oahu
• Maui
• Kauai
• Lana’i
• Moloka’i
• Music:
• “Burning Love” Behind the Scenes with Wynonna (SD 1:32)
• “Can’t Help Falling in Love” A* Teens Music Video (SD 1:02)
• “Your Ohana” Music Video (SD 2:11)
• A Stitch in Time (SD 3:31)
• Inter-stitch-ials - Trailers and Teasers

Lilo & Stitch is just a wonderful little film. Something of an outlier in the Disney catalog, it was a showcase effort for the studio when they were up for taking a big swing for something new. Now we get the live-action remake to look forward to in just a couple of weeks and for once I’m actually kind of excited for a Disney live-action remake. But as the past is prologue, I’m not expecting too much. Regardless of how the new film turns out, we have the classic film looking amazing with Dolby Vision HDR and sounding terrific with Dolby Atmos. Lilo & Stitch is a true crowd-pleaser with a lot of heart and plenty of mischievous humor. One of my favorite Disney films, it’s nice to see it come home on 4K. Highly Recommended