After Snow White’s failure, does live-action Lilo & Stitch pass the test?

Disney fans put off by the recent Snow White debacle can rest assured that the studio’s latest live action remake is a cut above most family films, writes Leigh Paatsch.

With an expertly executed Disney live action remake and a fitting farewell to one of the truly great popcorn film franchises, it’s a good week for a trip to the movies.

Stitch and Maia Kealoha as Lilo in Disney’s live-action Lilo & Stitch.

LILO & STITCH (PG)

Director: Dean Fleischer Camp (Marcel the Shell With Shoes On)

Starring: Maia Kealoha, Zach Galifianakis, Tia Carrere

***1/2

As we recently learned from the lamentable Snow White, not all Disney animated IP should be migrated from the illustrated realm to the world of live action.

Therefore most folks of sound mind and tight budgetary protocols will be thinking twice before straying anywhere near a Lilo & Stitch remake.

Remarkably, the new version kicks all reservations to the curb quickly and definitively. This is a very, very good children’s movie, retaining all that was so endearing about the 2002 original – a kooky cartoon classic in its day – particularly when it comes to the special bond shared by the title characters.

Lilo (played brilliantly by first-timer Maia Kealoha) is a 6-year-old girl living on one of Hawaii’s smaller islands, which just happens to be the crash site for a downed interplanetary spacecraft.

Trouble-magnet alien Stitch in Lilo & Stitch.

The small alien creature piloting the vessel looks a little bit like a dog, which is all the excuse the imaginative Lilo needs to pass off the diminutive visitor as her new pet pooch.

Going by the name of Stitch, this would-be canine is a total chaos magnet, always up to the kind of high-jinks that result in flash floods, spot fires, wrecked rooms, crashed cars and collapsed buildings. All of which delights the merrily oblivious Lilo no end.

Just as importantly, the pair have something crucial in common: both are fugitives on the run from the authorities (the recently orphaned Lilo does not want to placed in a foster home, while Stitch is being chased by enemies from outside this solar system).

While the new Lilo & Stitch does not aspire to (nor achieve) greatness, it radiates a consistent warmth, humour and carefree spirit that few family films can match these days.

Lilo and Stitch is in cinemas now.

Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING

Director: Christopher McQuarrie (Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning)

Starring: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Simon Pegg, Esai Morales, Ving Rhames.

****

It was almost three decades ago that the world first marvelled at the ceiling-dangling, crisis-wrangling, logic-mangling heroics of IMF Agent Ethan Hunt.

Now, after eight movie Missions – all of them stamped ‘Impossible’ – retirement finally beckons for Tom Cruise’s indefatigable, indestructible superspy.

For all of its flaws and excesses, The Final Reckoning doesn’t skimp when it comes to delivering the wild ride and the wide-screen spectacle fans have come to expect from the M:I brand.

Yes, it is very much in the business of the tying-up of loose ends, and the blowing-up of stuff.

However, at a marathon running time of 170 minutes, Final Reckoning is also a victory lap, a valedictory speech and a non-stop celebration of the can-do-it-will-do-it-just-did-it workplace ethos of its 62-year-old star, Tom Cruise.

You can say what you want about ol’ Tom – chances are you already have – but no-one can deny the guy gives his all whenever he shows up for any production bearing his name.

Whenever the movie is simply winding up its hyperkinetic star and pointing him at the next elaborate action sequence, Final Reckoning strikes guilty-pleasure gold over and over again.

However, the creative team behind the scenes seem to have forgotten that no-one ever attends a Mission: Impossible movie for the storytelling.

Tom Cruise plays Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.

Therefore Final Reckoning chews up a lot of screen time and audience patience by unspooling a very ropy yarn involving a sinister bit of AI software (aka ‘The Entity’) about to help itself to every nuclear warhead on the planet, a not-so-sinister supervillain (Esai Morales as the Hunt-hating Gabriel) who would very much like to own that software, and a US President (Angela Bassett) who has given Ethan 72 hours to sort out the whole mess and, you know, save the planet from certain destruction while he’s at it.

Most of Ethan’s support team from the previous M:I movie Dead Reckoning – such as tech whiz Benji (Simon Pegg), coding genius Luther (Ving Rhames) and posh pickpocket Grace (Hayley Atwell) – are all there to frown intently at the nearest countdown clock, and cut the occasional coloured wire on a live explosive device.

They and just about everybody else in the movie get at least one line of dialogue to pay unnecessary tribute to Ethan Hunt, often repeating what an amazing spiritual, strategic and world-rescuing maverick he has been within the world of unsanctioned espionage.

Simon Pegg shares a moment with Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.

It’s all a bit much, really. After seven previous movies where character development of Ethan Hunt was not a factor, scene upon scene in Final Reckoning builds him up as some kind of killer combo of Jesus Christ, James Bond, Jason Bourne and maybe even The Two Jacks (Reacher and Ryan).

All that sucking-up slows down Final Reckoning at the very moments it needs to be getting a move-on.

Nevertheless, when all is said and done, Final Reckoning still stands as a memorable and fitting completion of one of mainstream cinema’s most popular, exciting and entertaining journeys.

Just as the cliche holds true that they don’t make movies like this anymore, they won’t be making a movie star like Tom Cruise any time in the future, either.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is in cinemas now.

Originally published as After Snow White’s failure, does live-action Lilo & Stitch pass the test?