The reputational damage Primark has done to Disney’s Lilo & Stitch is borderline obscene. Go back to the 2002 original and you’ll find it to be an animated masterpiece, with the first use of watercolour backgrounds at the studio in six decades, where the foam kiss of Hawaii’s waves crash against hazy pink sunsets. A blue-furred, bulldog-adjacent alien, eventually named Stitch, crash-lands on Earth and bonds with a troubled little girl, Lilo Pelekai. He questions what his purpose is, whether there’s anything to him beyond destruction. In short, it’s Frankenstein with a happy ending.
Exhaustive merchandising, though, has since overwritten Stitch as the non-consenting emblem of millennial cringe – something along the lines of him, half-lidded and unimpressed, clutching a steaming mug above the caption “don’t talk to me before my coffee”. It’s no surprise, then, to see the Disney live-action remake machine render him in spiritless CGI, or to see it butcher his character arc in favour of an extended sequence of him driving around in a little pink car, or farting in a punch bowl, all so audiences can slap their knees and call him a cheeky little rascal. If it sounds like there’s a streak of bitterness there, I won’t deny it (I’m aware it isn’t standard practice to claim Lilo & Stitch is a covert adaptation of Mary Shelley’s masterwork).
