Ultra HD Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Disney's live-action adaptations of beloved animated movies have met with varying degrees of pushback over the years, but one welcome upside has been the habit of marking the occasion with the 4K release of the originals that spawned them. Such is the case with Lilo & Stitch, its initial popularity only seeming to grow over the past 23 years into a deeply devoted fanbase. (Any seasoned pin trader knows how fast anything with the little blue guy on it disappears from the boards.)

Lilo is a young girl angered and saddened by the loss of her parents. Stitch is an illegal science experiment gone horribly wrong, now an alien fugitive whose spaceship crashlands in Hawaii. Both are oblivious to social cues and both are desperately in need of a friend so, mistaking him for a malformed pooch, Lilo adopts Stitch and they eventually teach one another the true meaning of ‘ohana, which loosely translates to “extended family.” It’s a surprisingly emotional and extremely funny story that stands out as one of the studio’s best non-musical offerings of the 21st century.

Note that this is the modified version of the movie, one scene re-animated to show Lilo hiding from her sister Nani behind a pizza box instead of inside the dryer, as in the theatrical version, so's not to give kids dangerous ideas. (I climbed into a dryer when I was a kid and couldn't get myself out, that’s no joke.)

To my shock, there has never been a standalone Blu-ray release of Lilo & Stitch that I could locate, strictly a series of double-feature discs that pair it with the first sequel, squeezing the two movies onto a single platter. Haters of compression artifacts, rejoice: The 2160p presentation on UHD is darn-near perfect, with crisp outlines in the animation and 100% legible text as Nani flips through a book about dogs. The uniquely designed characters stand out against the watercolor backgrounds, proffered via the wide color gamut to evoke tropical vibes. Excellent specular highlights bring fresh beauty to darker scenes, while a lava lamp adds a pleasing glow during a camping trip.

The Atmos remix is a total gas, with some genuinely inspired use of the height channels. The spacey exploits at the beginning certainly lend themselves to 360-degree surround but wonderful little moments abound throughout. Alan Silvestri’s musical score spreads across the multichannel soundstage and Elvis’ songs have never sounded better.

Like the Lilo & Stitch Blu-rays of yore, this 4K disc is movie-only, but the new-and-improved HD Blu-ray in the package does finally carry some—definitely not all—of the legacy DVD extras, albeit in SD quality. We can at least listen to the director/producer commentary while the movie plays in 1080p, but still MIA are major goodies like the two-hour “making of” documentary from 2009’s two-DVD “Big Wave Edition.” The packaging bucks Disney’s recent trend of releasing their 4Ks in SteelBooks, opting instead for a more traditional yet still attractive o-card with an embossed title treatment. A Movies Anywhere 4K digital copy code is included.

My brood didn’t catch this one in theaters so we’d only ever watched it on sub-par discs, and now I feel like we’re really seeing it (and hearing it) for the very first time. And it’s magical, a timelier-than-ever reminder that no family is perfect… or perhaps they all are?

Chris Chiarella