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popculturebuffet · 1 month ago

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It's the Girl in the Red Truck Charlie Brown is exactly what I needed after my dog died

In Loving Memory of Maddie

This.. has not been an easy few days for me. I expected to have at least 5 or 6 more years with my Dog maddie, a schanuzer with a resting grumpy face that belied her enthuasim, kindness and eagerness to see me , my sister and my mom every day. She was a good dog and her sudden death at the vets due to Kidney failure was gutting. I spent a chunk of Sunday breaking down and the rest getting out in the world to get some air and not let my grief consume me, with the gracious help of my mom. I thought i'd have my dog daughter forever but instead.. it was only a short, beautiful two years.

So in these trying times.... I decided to endulge myself. I asked my friend Emma to switch what she'd planned to comission from me with something else. I've gotten enough energy back to do both, but I still wanted to do this. I wanted to do something that felt in the spirit of my dog: a bit scruffy, a bit weird but heartfelt. And thankfully I had just the idea in mind: A look at a special i'd long wanted to see and had no idea was easily avaliable on youtube, one that failed in what it's creator wanted to do but still starred a character I loved so dearly i'd watch him eat a cactus for 3 hours. Something so weird that film critic and my idol Nathan Rabin couldn't help but admire it's guts if still find it hilaroiusly weird. It was something I both HAD to see and cover when I saw it. It's The Girl in the Red Truck, Charlie Brown

Girl in the Red Truck was intended to be Peanuts Creator Charles Schulz' Citzen Kane. His magnum opus. A big artsy expression of his talents. It's instead an awkward and ambitious b movie packed into a tv special where Schulz favorite character and mine Spike is sandwiched between his daughter Jill trying her best to act and the whitest man to ever white as her love intrest trying to drag her to the city against her will by wearing her down, all done with decent animation on live action that had the misfortune of coming out after Roger Rabbit ate it's whole seven course meal before this special got to the table. It's weird, it's hilarious, and it's deeply fascinating and i'ts just the kind of thing I needed after this loss. So let's dive in

Who's Spike?

So for casual peanuts fans, they probably won't recognize the star of this picture. But to me he's everything. Spike REALLY is my faviorite Peanuts character. He's got stiff competition from Peppermint Patty, Rerun and Snoopy's Awkward Teenage Nephew, but I genuinely love this guy and i'm delighted to go off about him for a bit.

Spike first appeared in August 1975, announcing he was coming to visit Snoopy. He was the first member of Snoopy's family we met, and he made quite an impressoin, two feet to be exact

As you can see like his brother Spike's a touch weird, taking it even father: instead of living in the suburbs spike lives a solitary existance in the desert just outside of the small town of Needles, California. He's often isolated with only letters to his brother and a cactus for company, with only occasional trips into town to play pinball and hangouts with the local coyotes to keep him company.

Spike is both tragic and joyful: he deals with loneliness and depression.. yet finds his own way around them, making friends with a cactus, making jokes, and trying to find love despite looking like a warn out pile of hair and sorrow all day everyday. Spike is a deeply relatable weirdo, someone outside society, but still a kind soul who just wants to be love and makes his own fun

He gets depressed, sure, but as someone who often feels isolated thanks to his autism and lack of ablility to drive himself anywhere and struggles with depression, Spike is asperational. he's comfortable in who he is and gets back up from his depressive episodes. He even met mickey mouse

He's a fun character, able to carry whole strips basically by himself and was a delightful addition to the peanuts universe, a break from the strip's usual universe to check in on Snoopy's brother what lives in the desert.

Despite joining the main cast eventually and being a favorite of Schulz, Spike hasn't fully caught on in animation. While I love the guy... I do understand WHY. Spike is hard to adapt: He's a talky character and part of his charm is him being wistful in his desert home.. something he can't do in animation as like his brother he can't speak, so he needs a narrator. That leads to the other issue that makes him prickly to adapt: he's isolated from most of the main cast. Snoopy visits him and writes letters to him, but he rarely if ever interacts with the kids. One of his few major interactions with them was in his intro where Lucy, in one of her genuinely sweet moments, saw how skinny and malnourished the guy is, swept him over to her house and made sure he got a decent meal or 5.

I mean she took Linus' bed to do it because it's still Lucy, but the fact that someone who usually cannot stand dogs and whose reaction to Snoopy's dog house burning down was

Lept to take this guy in for a while is so damn cute. I really wish Spike would've moved in with the Van Pelts. Rerun rejected him because.. plot. (The special does it better by having their parents say he can't stay). But I suppose his charm would've been lost.

Back to the point, this was one of the few times I can remember spike really showing up with the rest of the cast. The others were buying the baseball field back from some developers so the kids could still play on it and being snoopy's best man..

Not that he was exactly the BEST

It's probably the only terrible thing I can think of the guy ever did and understandably Snoopy's Getting Married choose to have it just be some random golden retriver the bride ran off with instead.

Spike is part of the main cast.. but he's APART from the main cast, in his own little sphere that's harder to thread into things. The specials loved threading in quick adaptations of daily strips, but it's easier to throw in a peppermint patty sleeping gag (always a classic), or snoopy asking for food. It's harder to just.. randomly jumpcut to a depressed man in a desert talking to a cactus. Even harder on the budget. And back then the specials didn't focus on characters who weren't' Charlie Brown or Snoopy as the main focus often. There's exceptions: She's a Good Skate focuses solely on Peppermint Patty, adapting the strip's longest and one of it's best storylines, Why Charlie Brown Why? focusing on Linus breakdown as he deals with his friend/crush's cancer diagnosis and the jackassery of those around him, and Play it Again Charlie Brown focusing on Lucy and Schroder but that's three specials out of dozens. Now granted they could've say had Snoopy take a road trip to see him, adapt a few of snoopy's weird road trips together, like that time he planned to go to wimbeldon, ended up in Kansas City and decided to see his sister

But they likely wanted to keep things cost effected and stick to the characters people were familiar with and buying merchandise of... like Snoopy's brother olaf

Emma, my friend who sponsored this, got an olaf out of a gashapon machine and it sent me down the rabbit hole. Olaf is apparently HUGE in japan. Also for those wondering he's snoopy's other brother.

There's also andy, marbles, Molly and Rover. The latter two are dubiously canon as Schulz did'nt consider the specails canon and unlike Andy they were never brought into the strip but since he created them i'm a counting them. Olaf later became a recurring character traveling the world with Andy and even planning to move in with Spike if they could ever find him. I like to think they did and to this day the three are just hanging out , hanging out with the family having themselves a party in the desert.

There was plenty of material to mine to loop Spike in.. but it was easier not to. Why go out of your way for Snoopy's weird brother when you have locally sourced weirdness from snoopy, sally as she grew and peppermint patty? Spike's a great character but I do understand why he only got one special. I do hope Apple does a Spike Special that isn't actively buried by it's creators and a pain in the ass to remaster, as he deserves his day in the sun, but I don't hold the grudge I used to for not using him. He's not unusable as this specail shows: His very unique look, daffy personality tha'ts just different enough from his brother and quiet sadness and solitude. He just needs a bit more attention like a lot of godo doggos

The Actual Special

It's the Girl in the Red Truck is a live action animated hybrid, part of Chuck's grand ambitions for this special. It was intended to be state of the art, impressive and cool. Building on what came before to create something unique.... that thanks to delays ended up coming out the same year as roger rabbit

And hurt it did as everyone assumed it was cashing in on Roger Rabbit but with less of a budget to the point, and this is a real thing I found on wikipedia, Charles had his daugher and the film's star Jill emphasise the date in interviews. It did not help.

Look comparing this to Roger Rabbit... it's far behind. Spike interacts with a few objects, but most of the things he holds are animated too. Roger Rabbit wasn't the first to do this, but they were a pioneer in how this was done. The way Roger seamlessly interacted with things with revolutionary. I mean the dueling piano scene with Daffy and Donald alone shows just how well synched everything was.

On their own though.. the effects are solid. For a big budget B movie, Spike blends in okay. Sometimes he's very jarring like a scene at the diner or some of the skating, other times.. he blends in perfectly. He's just a weird cartoon in our world, sitting in a chair having snacks or getting smacked in the head with a truck. It's not perfect, but for what had to be only a few million dollars , some of which HAD to be out of pocket, it's impressive. Peanuts is a bit franchise yes, but it's easy to forget the specails were usually made on a budget of a paperclip and a piece of string. The fact that even with an extra bump he could pull this off is remarkable.

Spike also works well as a lead. Having Snoopy interact with adults would've been more markatable.. but it just woul'dve felt.. off. Snoopy never spoke to adults in the strip why start now. Spike's detachment from the usual peanuts gang is a strength here: He has a setting you can easily slide other characters into, him interacting with adults is weird but not as weird as he hardly interacts with anyone, and like Snoopy he has great physicality: He has a lot of snoopy's effortless charm and belief.. but is a lot more human, a lot more self doubt in his tired bones. The animatoin on spike is fantastic and shows that even without his monologues, he works just as fine in pantomime as his brother, starting the specail cooking pancakes, being dismayed at the mountain of cans in Jenny, our lead's truck, and playing chess with salt and pepper bottles. His fun personality, love of life and fun expressions all come through. He gets into shenanigans like snoopy, probably another reason why they didn't use him as they had snoopy already for pantomime eat up specail time shenanigans, but you feel him. Snoopy would also relax into a chair, but he might not react the same to the cans, and would probably try to run rather than lift up a sign saying "I'm not a coyote" when being shot at.

What really hurts the special.. is the actual plot. The idea behind it isn't bad, in the strips there was a girl in a red truck, a woman who drove by where Spike lived every day he waved to

It wasn't the only strip adapted (big thanks to tarvinneeko mainitakaan on youtube who has videos pointing out what moments are pulled directly from the strip) , as Spike's french lessons, pancakes being taken by tumbleweeds and other early gags are pulled directly from it.

Frankly the special would've been better if it was just.. spike doing antics in the desert. It could still be a hybrid, still throw an actor or two in, but Spike works fine on his own and they had the means via the letter he sends to snoopy to get over the lack of dialouge. It's damming that the best part of the specail.. is the first 10 minutes that easily could've been done in animation only without loosing anything. In fact doing so could've allowed for more gags with Spikes cactus, which here is a real life prop. Hell even in live action you could still do a lot of the jokes I saw looking up this french strip

Instead... we meet the girl in the Red Truck herself, Jenny. Jenny is played by Jill Schulz and god bless her.. she tries. She has genuine energy in the part, wants this to work and is trying. Sadly the director did not help. The film was directed by Walter C Miller, who was a friend of Sparky's.. but also inexperinced, blaming his issues on his actors and making a miserable experince for Jill, forcing her to smile more than she would and likely explaning why the cast is so damn stilted. While inexperince didn't help, a good director could've worked with that. We did not have one of those.

I'm sympathetic to most involved here: Schulz is far from the first director to have more ambition than budget or knowhow, and unlike most he wasn't a dick about it. He was one of the kindest men who ever existed. Jill Schulz was just trying and was better at dancing and rollerskating than this. She was a good skate charlie brown but not meant for this. Miller was a director, had more knowhow and probably coudl've gotten someone in who knew what they were doing, but was too stubborn to admit his faults and work with what he had. You can be a low budget director and still do great shit but Miller just didn't know how.

That said, the script.. isn't good and the characters ar eflat. Jenny is an aerobics instructor who lives in Needles and gladly waves to spike. When her truck breaks down and Spike accidently fixes it with a head injury, she gladly offers to take him home and both having a mild crush on her and figuring why not, he goes with. Jenny is a kind soul who likes living by the river, something I can admire and enjoys her peaceful life. She even has a friend Molly who runs the local diner and I love how Molly.. already knows spike. He's one of her best customers. It just fits the character so well and makes sense. Spike usually only goes into town to eat or play pinball and him playing pool and as someone who can't drive myself I relate to going with whatever happens to be in walking distance.

Sadly there's a dark cloud on the horizon, an obstalce in the way of this happy new life for Spike: Jeff. Jeff is the whitest man to ever white. He looks like the bully from revenge of the nerds and uncle joey from full house got in an unfortunate teleporter accident.

Tenmu Shooter McGavin here is trying to take Jenny away from all of this, wanting her to take a film audition he got from her in LA. As he tells her "jen do you really want to spend the rest of your life out here in the desert teaching aerobics?" the kind of sentence that makes me happy this is my job. He does not get her at all: She directly tells him "I like the people here, I like it here i'm not moving to the city" as nicely as she can, and while it puts a strain on their relationship as he's got an unindentified music job in la. Probably trying to bulldoze an orphanage to put up a night club But he's determined to get her to move despite her clearly not wanting to. Jeff GETS why she dosen't want to move on some level but can't accept it and ends up moving out here anywhere. Jeff you can make music anywhere and musicains would come out to the middle of nowhere to smoke weed and record if you made the spot cool enough. Spike could probably get you the good stuff. He knows people.

That might not pan out though as Jeff.. is DEEPLY jealous of spike. He mopes that Spike is in his chair, asks "why you left the door open because a wild animals' here" and spends every moment he can trying to beat a dog in a metaphorical pissing contest. Which is never going to happen. Trying to compete with your partners pets makes you look like an asshole, makes them like you less and is pointlesss when the dog... is doing nothing wrong. And if you try to make it literal well.. your going to loose that match too.

Mary Worth is a hell of a drug and i'd like to thank The Comics Curmudgeon for getting me hooked on it.

Jeff is just.. deeply unlikeable. He makes spike ride in the back and Jenny is rightfully upset. It gets to the point when he hears GUNFIRE in the climax he claims he didn't hear anything. In the desert. Where there's no other sounds. I mean I can't blame him for not wanting to go towards gunfire but still jesus. You question WHY this guy gets the girl in the end when all he does is bitch and moan about a perfectly resonable dog who has no intentions to try and break up his relationship.

For now everyone roller discos. And you may laugh at a small desert town, one Schulz lived in as a boy that is very real, having a roller disco but my counter to that is it also has a cartoon dog. We get a really fun roller dance sequence and Jill shows off her moves. She's incredibly good and while spike lags at times and it's one of the most notable times. He can't help have fun.

Alas Spike realizes Jenny loves Jeff.. and his home is just not with her. His home is out there. It's a flaw in the script: the idea of Spike getting a genuinely loving owner but realizing he belongs out there is good but they spent so much time focusing on zack moris defective older clone that they neglected to give this the emotional weight it needed.

The scene after of Spike coming across some coyotes and jamming is delightful though.

I love finally getting to see some of these chaps as the Coyotes are an off screen force in the strip, their scraggly beards and hats and how they just.. vibe with spike. He whips out a jug and joins in and it's a wholesome moment. It's also more proof that had the special just focused on spike alone, this would've been a true classic instead of an awkward experiment. The long stretches we spend on a romance we don't possible care about drag down a special that easily coudl've been 20-30 minutes and all the better for it.

Instead the doofuses have to save spike from Gunfire. I do love him holding up a sign saying "I am not a coyote" but otherwise it just feels a bit much and they stop shooting when they realize their are humans out there, which feels unrelasitic. It's the desert. Ther'es plent of corpse burying space.

So Spike decides getting shot at occasionally is better than spending time with Jeff and walks off. The ending is effective depsite the lack of emotinal build up, jenny wistfully saying he's "out there" and Spike playing a jug... not sure if this was the right call.

This special could've been something fantastic. Spike is a great character and the best moments are him just getting to be himself, dealing with the highs of desert life from french lessons, jug music, a pretty girl driving by once a day, to the lows of getting shot at. The core idea is good but it's overstuffed, staffed by actors who never should've been actors and stiff. Schulz meant well with this one but whenever it breaks from Spike the special breaks down. Spike works because he's a well built multifacted character, triumph and tragedy all in one beagle. He has tons of range.. but he's strapped to two characters who were thiny written. While the direction dosen't help, i'ts clear Charles didn't put too much effort into the actual characters and he CAN do better. Even one off characters have more pop than these two. I'd watch Spike and his awkward teenage nephew on a road trip through the desert long before i'd watch the human only scnees in this again.

This project... just did not work. It's entertaning because spike is and parts of it are so bad it's good. "You wanna teach aerobics in the desert your whole life?" is pure cinema. It's fun to watch because like any b-movie it has a LOT more ambition than it can deliver on. As a specail, a film or Charles Schulz citzen kane it fales. As a weird experiment that's fun to look back on, hilarous to watch at time and has plenty of good antics from a throughly likeable dog in a hat, it succeeds. This is a so bad it's good b movie that happens to have a peanuts character in it and said peanuts character is the best part of it. It's enjoyable for being something so weirdly diffrent from the brand focusing on adults melodrama in the desert, for how spike sometimes dosen't fit, and for just.. spike. This special isn't for everyone and I understand that. 100%. But it's for me: a goofy little failed experiment starring my faviorite fictional dog that was just what I needed after loosing my dog. Thanks for reading. If you'd like to support this blog consider joining patreon

Or my substack to help keep the lights on and keep the root beer flowing. I currently have a substack exclusive retrospective of the critic up and will soon have subscriber exclusvie reviews of the oblongs and some other fun stuff. Thanks again for reading

#peanuts #spike #snoopy #charlie brown #it's the girl in the red truck charlie brown #animation #specials #charles schulz #80s #truck #skating #live action animation #who framed roger rabbit #olaf #belle #snoopy's awkward teenage nephew

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artist-issues · 27 days ago

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That’s It.

I’m tired of seeing everyone repeat the same four points: “1) Nani gives Lilo to the state! 2) Hawaii has a better marine biology program than San Fransisco! 3) Jumba doesn’t get redeemed! 4) Pleakley’s not wearing a dress!”

Those are not the only things that were bad about this remake. You could easily tell it was going to be all that and more beforehand, but most people’s reaction to the trailer was “it’s surprisingly good!” and now they’re acting all surprised. If you didn’t see this coming, enough to purchase a ticket, you’re part of the problem and you don’t get the original movie any more than the people who made this remake did.

So I’m done being quiet, this is the Lilo & Stitch 2025 Takedown Post.

And as usual the only good thing about an attempted-remake is that it gives people a reason to think about what made the original so good.

Let’s go in order. But just scroll down to the Heading you Care About if you don’t want to read all this.

1. Cobra Bubbles

In this movie, Cobra Bubbles is a secret agent hunting for aliens and they have a new character take his place as the state social worker.

The Problem They Were Trying to Solve With this Change: “We shouldn’t have a black man or a government worker feel like an insensitive antagonist to Lilo’s family.”

That’s a stupid surface-level one-dimensional misread of the character from the original…and it wouldn’t have been hard, at all, for a child to explain to the 2025 filmmakers that Cobra is not an insensitive antagonist in the original.

Cobra Bubbles is not insensitive and he is not in any way portrayed as a bad guy in the original. Nani sees him that way, Nani sees him as antagonistic, because he’s the representation of Lilo being taken away.

But Nani is wrong about him and learns that she is wrong about him by the end of the movie.

Can we please make a list?

Cobra’s first interaction with the caretaker of the child he was being sent to protect was that she ran out into the road, yelled at a complete stranger, and dented his car.

Then he found her locked out of the home and threatening the child inside with a hammer in her hand.

Then he found out the stove was on while she was out, and she’d left a 7 year-old alone.

The 7 year-old made comments about being disciplined with bricks and a pillow case.

The 7 year-old looks like she might be more than a little emotionally unbalanced because she’s figuring out how to put voodoo spells on her friends to punish them.

He still gave that pair of sisters three days to straighten the ship. When in actuality, in 2002, under HRS §587-73, (don’t play with me) the social worker would’ve been well within his rights to remove the child from the home right then. But instead he gives her three days to fix it. THEN

The 18 year-old loses her job.

The family gets a “dog” who he is implied to know is an alien, right off the bat.

The alien is violent and wreaks havoc across town.

The 7 year-old almost drowns while they surf instead of find a job.

He lets the child and caretaker have one more night together to say goodbye, but when he’s on the way to get her he gets a call that she’s being attacked by aliens, hears a chainsaw, and finds the house on fire.

Do you understand what I’m saying.

Cobra Bubbles had NO BUSINESS being as BIG A SOFTIE AS HE WAS for all of the original movie. He was not only well within his legal rights to take Lilo away from Nani immediately, but he was actually required by law, it was his DUTY, to remove her immediately. But he didn’t do that. Why?

Now listen to me very carefully.

Lilo and Stitch is a movie about how “Family chooses to love and commit to one another selflessly, no matter what the other person can do for them or how hard they make it.” The fancy way they say it is just “Ohana means family: family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten.”

Did you catch that? “No matter how hard they make it.”

Cobra Bubbles was a CIA agent before this. A CIA agent who saved the planet, by doing what? Convincing an alien race to leave them alone. Oh, he didn’t fight them off? No. How? He “convinced” them? He talked it out? Sounds like a pretty compassionate guy, for all his tough exterior. How did he do that?

He could’ve picked any animal that’s actually endangered. The filmmakers chose to make him the guy who convinced aliens to value mosquitos.

MOSQUITOS. Creatures that give nothing, only take. Ugly little bloodsucking monsters. That’s the creature he convinced them to care about enough to save the planet.

NOW do you have any trouble understanding why this is the specific social worker who would give an alien-infested dumpster fire of a dangerous home a chance when two sisters are about to be torn apart?

Do you see that Cobra is just another example of the grace that the movie is always talking about? The love that transforms someone from bad to good simply because it refuses to give up even when it gets nothing out of it? I’m repeating myself because I want you to see why he was a well-done character who NEEDED NO CHANGE.

Cobra Bubbles’ character is not an insensitive monster who doesn’t care who his actions hurt as long as he gets the job done. But you know who that does sound like?

2. Gantu

Gantu is not in the remake at all.

The Problem They Were Trying to Solve With This Change: “It’s going to cost us upwards of 1.5 millions of dollars to design, sculpt, rig, animate, and render a character this big in addition to finding a suitable voice actor to play the part.”

This is a really dumb choice for several reasons. A. Without Gantu, there is no “stakes-raiser” to Lilo and Nani’s story. The movie has no climax without him. For the first and second acts of the movie, it’s about a grieving pair of girls trying to prove themselves to a social worker while the story-equivalent of Beethoven the Destructive St. Bernard wacky Jumba & Pleakley antics get in their way. But when a 40-foot tall alien stomps into their lives and abducts Lilo & Stitch in a spaceship that careens around the island during an explosive sky-chase scene, now you have a high-octane, somebody-could-die climax.

B. Without Gantu, Stitch looks weaker. The climax gave Stitch a reason to come out of the wackadoo puppy he’s been posing as and suddenly remind everybody that he’s a lethal weapon who can survive thousand-foot drops, lava, and astronomic explosions—and a giant alien’s Thanos-dwarfing fist. Take him out and who do we have as a match for Stitch to go up against, even for a moment, and prove how much he’s changed to be willing to risk his freedom and fight?

C. Without Gantu you have no villain to reflect that STITCH is no longer a villain. (So they substituted Jumba.)

But the reason this character is really worth millions is, again, the theme.

I told you Cobra Bubbles was a character who did not put “duty” or even “convenience” or “position” over the real lives of Lilo and Nani. He saw that there was love there, and in his own way, he gave it a chance. And even when he chose to take Lilo away, he did it carefully; he gave them time to say goodbye.

GANTU IS THE OPPOSITE OF COBRA BUBBLES.

Gantu is the insensitive, uncaring, unyielding Captain whose commitment to duty turns into rage and cruelty. Not Cobra.

Nani thinks Cobra is walking in a threatening to tear apart their family in a display of government judgement. But that’s what Gantu literally does.

His first reaction to Stitch is to call for his destruction. Without even waiting to see if “it can be reasoned with” like the Grand Councilwoman suggests. He’s merciless. He mocks Stitch when Stitch is captive. And he knows that he caught Lilo, a human, along with him. He doesn’t care. He even suggests that Stitch eat her as a snack.

There are only two other characters who laugh at others’ misfortune in the movie. One is Stitch, the original villain. Then love changes him. The other is Jumba, who made Stitch. Then love changes him. But Gantu never gets changed. He’s only concerned with his job, and with personally annihilating the flaws he sees in Stitch.

Gantu is unyielding, ungracious, and cruel. And he’s big and powerful enough to be a test for Stitch to prove he’s changed. For the benefits he brings to the story, he’s worth 1.5 million and more. But they cut him anyway.

3. Jumba

In the new movie, Jumba is a villain through-and-through with designs on overthrowing the Galactic Council using Stitch, and instead of being redeemed, he’s sentenced to prison.

The Problem They Were Trying to Solve With This Change: “We can’t spend money on our real villain so we’ll just keep Jumba evil.”

The reason this is dumb is obvious. They created their own problem, and the ‘fix’ makes the movie weaker, not stronger. But here’s how.

In the original, Jumba is introduced as trying to self-protect. He’s on trial, and he lies. But when Stitch is revealed, he’s genuinely passionate about the thing he’s created. And he cares about image. He prefers to be called “evil genius,” and he hates the headlines labelling him “idiot scientist.”

You have to remember he’s part of “Galaxy Defense Industries.” They had him making weapons of destruction anyway. He just got too into it with his genetic Experiments, went a little insane.

I’m not downplaying the fact that Jumba is evil at the start of the movie. He is. It is evil to be outcasted from society and then respond to that with, “well, if they’re going to treat me like an idiot, I’LL SHOW THEM, I won’t care about anything except my passion for mad science!” That’s evil.

But it also explains a lot.

I said it in another post. Jumba’s whole utility as a character is that he knows who and what Stitch really is, better than anyone. He made him to be a monster who can’t belong and wreaks havoc on everybody else’s ‘place of belonging.’ Jumba is the audience’s insider’s perspective on what is going on in Stitch’s head, at first.

But when he’s redeemed, it happens fast. And why? Because that’s how plain and simple Stitch is, as a character. Jumba knows Stitch is a disgusting little monster with nothing inherently loveable about him, and no “greater purpose.” So when his disgusting monster is loved by someone? When his disgusting monster is willing to ask him, Jumba, for help? Something totally outside his programming, totally not what Jumba thought he’d ever be capable of?

That proves to Jumba, in an instant, that there’s love out there that transforms. And creates a place of belonging.

There were already germs of that, a desire to belong, a compassion, in Jumba after he reached earth.

He doesn’t try to get Nani fired, he offers an explanation for Pleakley’s swollen head.

He claims he won’t hit Lilo (why would he care about collateral damage?)

He sounds sorry for Nani when she’s upset about losing Lilo, and tries to keep Stitch from bothering her.

My point is, Jumba’s redemption isn’t important because it’s cute or because we need to set up the big happy found-family trope everybody loves.

Jumba’s redemption is important because it is just one more PROOF that what’s happened to Stitch is so incredible. The love Jumba finds transforming his monster is enough to transform Jumba, too.

But sure, fine, whatever, make him a soulless one-dimensional talking head. Whatever.

4. Stitch’s Design

In this movie, Stitch is cuter than he is ugly, and he’s half Lilo’s size.

The Problem They Were Trying to Solve With This Change: “Ugly-cute doesn’t come across as well in ‘live action’ animation. And all the Wal-Mart moms remember Stitch as ‘cute.’ Plus we’ll save about 15% in rendering the animation.”

This is crippling to the characterization of Stitch.

Stitch is supposed to be an echo of who Lilo could become now that she’s lost her parents and may be losing Nani. This scene:

Where Jumba points out that Stitch has nothing, and destruction is his only purpose, is the evidence for that. But Chris Sanders, who made this whole story, also point-blank said it. Stitch is a future Lilo, if she loses her family.

So that’s reason number 1 that he should be her same height. But also, practically, no iconic pair of best friends, yin and yang, have visuals where one is smaller than the other. Especially not if one of them is supposed to be disguised as a pet.

The point is, Stitch is not LILO’s pet. He is her best friend, her other half. But between the muzzle-muscles they worked into his upper lip and the darkened dog nose and the butt-scooting across the floor, the remake is trying to make him more pet-like in relation to Lilo.

That’s not what he is.

I said this in another post. But Stitch is supposed to throw food to the back of his head like a gator—his lips are not designed for forming words. His gums and teeth are supposed to look like a shark’s. His nose is supposed to be too big, stamped into his face. His ears are supposed to be like bat ears, not bunny ears. He hunches forward, instead of bending at the waist like a toddler. His eyes can narrow to lizard slits.

He has to look like he can believably be a disgusting monster. Yes, he can also be cute. But he has to first look like a monster. Because that’s what he really is, in the story. If he isn’t, then LILO’s love for him doesn’t look as powerful.

It is easy to love a cat even if it scratches you, because it’s cute. It’s harder to love a life-sized spider that keeps knocking you down and eating your prized possessions and laughing when you get hurt. Stitch is supposed to be closer to the second one, so that Lilo’s love shines brighter.

But also, practically:

She can’t look him in the eye for emotional shots when he’s that short. He’ll always have to awkwardly be standing on a box or a chair or a bed.

How is he going to scoop her up, hero-style, and leap off of an exploding spaceship with her in his arms, when he’s half her size? He could do it: it’ll look stupid, though. So they just don’t have that part in the movie.

She can pick him up. That alone is demeaning and again, the visuals are silly. Not what we’re going for.

5. Lilo’s Personality

In this movie, Lilo doesn’t like weird stuff, and she screams when she first meets Stitch. There’s no problem that this solves. It’s just laziness and a lack of care about the characters.

I would like to remind you that the original Lilo:

Made her own doll that looks like a shrunken head and pretended a bug laid eggs in her ears.

Makes up stories about a fish that controls the weather and actively deep-sea dives to bring it peanut butter sandwiches.

Has a knee-jerk reaction of using practical voodoo spells on friends who wrong her.

Listens exclusively to Elvis Presley.

Fills baby bottles with coffee.

Believes Nani’s manager is a vampire.

Has fishing nets and seashells in her room for decoration.

takes safari pictures of overweight bleached tourists.

meets a social worker and her first impulse is to ask if he’s killed someone.

Nails the door shut when she’s mad at her big sister.

She’s not friends with pound dogs in that original movie; when they first get there she acts like she’s never been in the kennel before, and originally wants a pet lobster.

I know that we all love that little girl they got to play Lilo, but if you were really being objective, you’d acknowledge that she’s a little girl. She’s not Lilo. She’s a cute little girl.

They did not write Lilo into the 2025 movie. They wrote any old little girl.

You should have known, from the moment she first sees Stitch and her reaction is to scream in the trailer, that THAT IS NOT LILO.

Lilo had a very specific set of characterizations. She was a character with a personality that exploded out of the screen. Every other character in the movie meets Stitch and reacts with disgust.

But not. LILO. She’s the only one to react to him like THIS:

She is literally not like anyone else. She’s doesn’t care that he’s ugly. Or weird. Or blue. Or even bat an eye when he can talk with all those shark teeth.

From Moment One, Lilo chooses Stitch. She chooses to love him. Regardless of what he can do for her. Regardless of how many times he pushes her over or rips up her house or makes her relationship with Nani harder. That is the number one thing about Lilo.

She is desperate for people to stay, but she chooses to love Stitch even though he’s a monster. And she tries to make him better. And her love succeeds in transforming him when nothing else could.

Lilo’s personality traits all mean something in the story. (I.e. she likes Elvis because she’s clinging to the past, she snaps pictures of tourists like they’re safari animals because they’re inherently people who LEAVE and she has issues with LEAVING, etc.) But the thing I think that was so obvious that the moviemakers missed for 2025 is she has to be weird. If she’s not weird, there’s no reason for her not to have friends. And if she has friends, what does she need Stitch for?

But also, Lilo’s personality in the new movie is just boring. Cute. But boring. Cute’s not that great of an accomplishment; any 7 year-old is cute.

6. Nani

I don’t think you guys need to know this. It’s not just that Nani leaves. It’s that “take care of yourself” is the exact opposite of the selfless message of the movie.

In the beginning, Lilo literally argues with Nani after being told she’s “such a pain,” and goes, “why don’t you SELL ME and buy a RABBIT INSTEAD?”

And then breaks down and cries at the thought of Nani wishing she had a rabbit instead of Lilo, later.

Because Lilo is afraid of people leaving. But Nani won’t leave her. Nani loses her job, her own life, because of Lilo. But she’s desperate to keep Lilo anyway, because she loves her. Don’t you understand? The message of the movie was about self-sacrificial love. A love that doesn't care what I get out of the relationship.

Nani starts it. But you know what, David loves her like that, too. And then Lilo transfers it to Stitch, who shows it off to Jumba. It’s a chain reaction, but Nani is spearheading it.

You realize that when their parents died, Nani already would’ve been in high school? With a whole life of her own? Her own friends, her own potential boyfriend, a job she went to, surf competitions (the trophies are in her room.) Lilo would’ve been well aware that that was the status-quo: Nani has her own life. And even a seven year-old can see that that life is being put on hold, but maybe the big sister wants to go back to it, at every turn.

The fact that Nani never does that, never expresses a desire for that, only ever expresses a desire to keep Lilo with her, is huge. It’s the core of the movie.

I don’t think that needs any more explaining.

We could talk more. Like about how Lilo needs to see that Stitch is an alien, because that’s the ultimate test: he’s one of the monsters who destroyed her house, he’s been lying to her and using her as a human shield, he’s a criminal—but she still winds up giving everything up to protect him.

Anyway. My neck hurts and I don’t want to type anymore. But we could talk about the music, the social worker, the grand councilwoman—it just doesn’t matter.

Ya’ll had more than enough details in the trailer to be able to not go see this movie because it was obviously going to ruin everything. But instead you chose to make this twisted corpse “the highest-grossing movie of any Memorial Day.” You bought tickets because they ruined a perfect movie and slapped together an uglier package for you.

Whatever. It was my favorite movie today, it’ll be your Treasure Planet or Tangled tomorrow. Keep riiiight on giving them your money, and keep letting influencers regurgitate the same four obvious facts to you over and over, because they paid Disney to make a talking-point for their content benefit. Whatever.

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