Leroy & Stitch
Year: 2006
Director: Tony Craig & Bobs Gannaway
Starring: Daveigh Chase & Chris Sanders
Runtime: 72 mins
BBFC: U
Published: 01/08/22
Director: Tony Craig & Bobs Gannaway
Starring: Daveigh Chase & Chris Sanders
Runtime: 72 mins
BBFC: U
Published: 01/08/22
Lilo & Stitch is my favourite Disney Animated Classic and Lilo & Stitch 2: Stich Has A Glitch is easily in my top three Disney Animated Sequels, but Stitch the Movie I only really tolerate because it’s Lilo & Stitch content. Stitch the Movie was an extended pilot for the Lilo & Stitch series on Disney Channel that ran between 2003 and 2006, and whilst it’s not uncommon for the Disney channel series to be opened with a direct to video feature length adventure, Lilo & Stitch was also given a direct to video film for its finale. Enter Leroy & Stitch…
After reuniting all six-hundred and twenty-five of Jumba’s (David Ogden Stiers) experiments and finding appropriate jobs for them around the island of Hawaii, Lilo (Daveigh Chase), Stitch (Chris Sanders), Jumba, and Pleakley (Kevin McDonald) are honoured by the Galactic Alliance for their work. With each awarded their dream job the friends part ways, but Lilo in particular quickly finds that she misses her friends terribly.
Meanwhile after failing to capture the experiments himself, Gantu (Kevin Michael Richardson) plans to break Dr. Hamsterviel (Jeff Bennett) out of prison in an attempt to please his master. Succeeding in his plan, Gantu and Hamsterviel create a new experiment that’s better than Stitch in every way so they can destroy all the good he has achieved. With the experiments now in danger, the friends must reunite on Hawaii to fight Hamsterviel’s experiment, Leroy, and his army of Leroy clones.
After reuniting all six-hundred and twenty-five of Jumba’s (David Ogden Stiers) experiments and finding appropriate jobs for them around the island of Hawaii, Lilo (Daveigh Chase), Stitch (Chris Sanders), Jumba, and Pleakley (Kevin McDonald) are honoured by the Galactic Alliance for their work. With each awarded their dream job the friends part ways, but Lilo in particular quickly finds that she misses her friends terribly.
Meanwhile after failing to capture the experiments himself, Gantu (Kevin Michael Richardson) plans to break Dr. Hamsterviel (Jeff Bennett) out of prison in an attempt to please his master. Succeeding in his plan, Gantu and Hamsterviel create a new experiment that’s better than Stitch in every way so they can destroy all the good he has achieved. With the experiments now in danger, the friends must reunite on Hawaii to fight Hamsterviel’s experiment, Leroy, and his army of Leroy clones.
Honestly, Leroy & Stitch is pretty bad. Stitch the Movie and the TV series never really understood what made Lilo & Stitch 1&2 special, instead focusing on the alien side of the story and not even really putting any effort into doing that. Whilst Stitch the Movie was serviceable as the start to the series, Leroy & Stitch feels so disconnected from the franchise as a whole because of its insistence on needing to have frequent and often underwhelming battle sequences. The pitch meeting for this film must have been “What if the 625 experiments got in a brawl?” and that was kind of it. We don’t get to see very many of the experiments do their thing, and the handful of new experiments brought in for the film don’t really have any interesting powers. Plus, all the experiments can talk now and that doesn’t make any sense because prior to this the only experiment who could talk was 625, now named Reuben (Rob Paulsen).
Visually the film looks on par with the series, which is a subtle way of saying it looks cheap. Character models and environments lack detail, some characters look a slightly different colour than they normally do, and the voice acting is just fine. Ultimately this is a film that was designed to be a feature length final episode of the show, but if you’re releasing it on DVD at least put a bit more money behind it Disney!
This is unquestionably a disappointment to end the main Lilo & Stitch franchise on. It’s low quality, ignores the facets that make the franchise great, and focuses its attention too much on setting up a battle which feels totally out of place. If this is the direction Disney wanted Lilo & Stitch to go in then it’s a good thing that this is as far as they managed to get before doing any more damage. As it stands, Leroy & Stitch is fun for kids, especially if they enjoy the show, but fans of the original film and Stitch Has A Glitch should just pretend it doesn’t exist.
Visually the film looks on par with the series, which is a subtle way of saying it looks cheap. Character models and environments lack detail, some characters look a slightly different colour than they normally do, and the voice acting is just fine. Ultimately this is a film that was designed to be a feature length final episode of the show, but if you’re releasing it on DVD at least put a bit more money behind it Disney!
This is unquestionably a disappointment to end the main Lilo & Stitch franchise on. It’s low quality, ignores the facets that make the franchise great, and focuses its attention too much on setting up a battle which feels totally out of place. If this is the direction Disney wanted Lilo & Stitch to go in then it’s a good thing that this is as far as they managed to get before doing any more damage. As it stands, Leroy & Stitch is fun for kids, especially if they enjoy the show, but fans of the original film and Stitch Has A Glitch should just pretend it doesn’t exist.