Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch has a Glitch (2005)

Somewhat confusingly, Lilo & Stitch 2 is not the second Lilo & Stitch film, but the third. It is, however, the direct sequel to the first film, so set before the events of the actual second film, 2003's Stitch! The Movie and its subsequent TV series, the latter still in production when this film came out. For the rather minor, odd child of the Disney feature film studio in the midst of its difficult period, Lilo & Stitch certainly gave rise to quite the franchise - and that's not even mentioning the Japanese series, the bizarre Kim Possible crossover or Kingdom Hearts.

So, before the introduction of any of the rainbow-coloured Stitch derivatives, this film retains a more simplistic, less-gimmicky core. Disneytoon were finally pushing against their bad image of churning out highly inferior sequels and this was even slated for a theatrical release until finally going direct to video...which given that Return to Neverland made it to big screens can be attributed only to nostalgia trumping quality in the world of Disney executive decisions - which I have to say are very probably correct.

For all the negative connotations that come with the idea of a Disneytoon direct-to-video sequel, the quality here is good. The animation is not feature-film Disney but it is also not an embarrassing drop or inadequate for the big screen. The casting is strong - if you can't get the original voice actress for Lilo (because she is busy voicing Lilo elsewhere, supposedly), you can't do much better than getting Dakota Fanning in instead, especially when the two are good friends and she does an excellent impersonation while retaining a few of her own recognisable quirks. Despite not directing this - and How to Train Your Dragon still a few years off - Chris Sanders returns to voice Stitch (as he seems happy to do for just about anything), with helm duties taken by future B.O.O. creator/director Tony Leondis - alongside Michael LeBash.

In a classic sequel to a sci-fi story, and as hinted in the title, here we find Stitch having a glitch. When Jumba made him, he was not quite fully charged-up, and thus he is now losing energy. As he does so, he reverts for a few moments to his original, highly destructive personality. This causes a great deal of problems for Lilo, who is trying to put together a hula dance in honour of her deceased mother, only for Stitch to periodically go feral and destroy things. Little Lilo only sees it as him being randomly cruel, and he himself can only describe it as his 'badness' coming out, so it causes much heartbreak between them, especially when he keeps causing problems on a pilgrimage to all the sites Elvis visited in Hawaii.

Eventually, everything comes to a head and Lilo realises just how serious Stitch's problems really are, seemingly too late. In truth, the ending is very clumsy indeed - how did Jumba's machine get there?? Couldn't we have had a line about the readings malfunctioning or some residual power trickling through rather than the ultimate cheese of it being declared impossible and too late only for it not to be? Especially since, y'know, this being a midquel takes most of the tension out of the situation.

But ultimately, this is better than the vast majority of Disney sequels, and the Stitch story lends itself to continuation. It's simple, its characters are well-defined and interact well - including comedy aliens and hapless love interest for Lilo's big sister - and the chance for a big ole group dance at the end is always going to be sweet. It's uncomplicated, unambitious and clumsy at the end, but it's also very cute, perfectly functional and a lot of fun. So I don't mind recommending this above just about any Disneytoon sequel I've seen except Simba's Pride, and let's face it, there are definitely rose-tinted spectacles affecting my view on that one. 

The Tigger Movie

This film is a guilty pleasure. It ought to be terrible: made by DisneyToon long after Pooh’s glory days with Disney in the 60s, this 2000 release was the Australian studio’s first theatrical film not made as a tie-in with an ongoing Disney TV series (their previous releases had been for Ducktales, Goof Troof and Doug), and centred on Disney’s somewhat annoying interpretation of the Tigger character. The plot is that Tigger comes to feel extremely lonely when he realises he has no family, so the rest of the gang decide to dress up as Tiggers to make him feel loved. However, when the deception is revealed he only feels betrayed and sets off alone into a snowstorm. Of course, he soon needs to be rescued and realises the true value of friendship and that there is more than one way to think of a ‘family’. Simple but effective.

And the fact is that it just works, in a way that Piglet’s Big Movie decidedly did not. The simple plot allows for a fuller gamut of emotions than these characters often get to display: disappointment, resentment, anger, embarrassment, guilt, loneliness and even fear. Putting Roo at the emotional heart of the film works very well, as he is just the sort of character who can make a well-meaning mistake while still having the audience’s sympathies on his side, and surprisingly enough the cheesy action sequence that ends the film is triumphant rather than embarrassing.

Much as I love the Milne books and the very different impression they give from the Disney works, I am no Pooh purist who hates the ‘bastardised’ version. It is not as though the brilliant and hilarious books went anywhere when Disney got hold of the rights and began making their distorted, Americanised versions – versions which have their own charm and sweetness. Even if the English roots of the premise are mostly detectable only in Dickie Attenborough’s grandson showing up for a few lines as ever-adorable Christopher Robin, the American voices never grated: I can see them as universal, and these are after all talking toy animals. Disney’s Pooh is an alternative, a retelling, a riff on a theme, and I’m perfectly happy to watch in that capacity, and really enjoy both.

And the fact is, the production is a triumph. DisneyToon were getting better and better – I really don’t think Simba’s Pride ought to be derided – and along with Disney Animation Japan (formed when Disney, in association with a TMS producer, bought out Thundercats’ studio Pacific Animation Corp) created crisp, exciting animation suitable for the big screen. While only one of the original cast was in place – the then-75-year-old John Fielder as Piglet - those who replaced them are some of the cream of American voice acting talent, doing extremely good impressions of their forebears – Eeyore was now voiced by Peter Cullen, best-known as Optimus Prime (with Frank Welker – Megatron – doing additional voices); John Hurt provided narration, returning to Disney after his role in The Black Cauldron; and both Tigger and Pooh were played by the master of imitating deeper voices Jim Cummings, who not only made a full and memorable character just by laughing in The Lion King but also – according to Corey Feldman – provided all Scar’s ‘big notes’ in ‘Be Prepared’, a story much-altered by urban legend.

Plus love for the property is everywhere in evidence, most obviously when not only do the parts where the pages of the books are visible pay tribute to the 60s episodes’ title sequences but Milne's prose – probably the most remarkable part of this production is not only did the animators bother to draw key episodes from the story in the style of original illustrator EH Shepard for the credits but took the trouble to write imagined pages from a book version in Milne’s style to be seen only for moments at a time, rather than, say, using Lorem Ipsum. The Sherman Brothers, songwriters for The Jungle Book and The Aristocats, were also brought in, though a little more is made of this being their first theatrical feature for Disney in nearly 30 years than really ought to be: they’d written songs for direct-to-video Pooh films several times in the years prior to this.

All these elements come together with the magic ingredient – a strong, simple but emotional plot for the well-loved characters – to make a film that remarkably is far more than I had expected it to be.

The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride

Disney’s sequels don’t have a reputation for being high-quality stuff. Disneytoon would churn these things out, and other than a watchable sequel for Aladdin, they were – and are – pretty dire. But TLK2, although of course nothing to the original, has a fond place in my heart as, for me, the most impressive direct-to-video sequel Disney ever made.

Two things make The Lion King II distinct, in my view: the first is Shakespeare, and the second Lebo M. The former because as a sequel to a film that took many of its cues from Hamlet, this one drew from Romeo and Juliet, and the latter because several of the songs were not actually written for this film at all, and thus stand alone better than might be expected from songs for a direct-to-video animation.

Let’s look at this historically. After the huge success of The Lion King in 1994, a CD was released by Disney of songs that were inspired by the film but not part of its soundtrack. All of the tracks but one (by Elton John but cut from the film) were written or interpreted (or both) by Lebo M, who was responsible for the Swahili segments in the original film, including the famous opening to ‘The Circle of Life’. This CD, released in early 1995, was called Rhythm of the Pride Lands. Several of the standout tracks made their way onto the soundtrack of the Broadway adaptation of the film, which opened in 1997, including the original ‘One by One’ and the hauntingly beautiful ‘Lea Halalela’, based on one of Hans Zimmer’s themes, which with English lyrics by the stage version’s director Julie Taymor would become the superb ‘Shadowlands’.

‘He Lives In You’ was the standout original composition. As well as being in the musical (twice), it opens the sequel, echoing the role of ‘The Circle of Life’, which was always going to be a hard act to follow. The rest of the film’s songs are either somewhat mindless, like the sappy ‘Love Will Find a Way’ or the extremely cheesy but eventually rich ‘We Are One’, or character-driven, like the enjoyably overblown ‘My Lullaby’ and ‘He Is Not One of Us’ with all its silly ensemble voices. I’m sure getting Robert Guillaume to sing seemed a good idea in a board meeting, too, but in practice…it isn’t a highlight.

So that is the progression of the music from original to this, the 1998 sequel. I was very eager to get the VHS tape when it was released, pre-ordering and getting a poster and little toy Kiara for my efforts. I was part of the early Internet fandom at the time, in the days of dial-up and only about 10 kids in the school having an email address, so I was quite alone in my excitement, though managed to persuade some friends to be interested too. The film was not quite everything I’d hoped, but it pleased me, and I’d happily watch it again today – far more readily than I would The Lion King 1 ½.

The story is that the little lion baby we see at the end of the first film grows into playful cub Kiara. She is adventurous and smart, and in an act of rebellion against an overprotective Simba, sneaks into the Outlands. There she meets a cub called Kovu, child of the sinister Zira, who was exiled by Simba for supporting her beloved Scar. Kovu was fairly obviously conceptualised as Scar’s cub, but presumably because of romances between cousins (once removed) not being something Disney was keen to promote, he is suggested to be not related to Scar, but instead chosen by him as successor. Zira, along with her other cubs Nuka and the awesome Vitani (who sadly had several lines cut for release, which exist only as animated storyboards), plots to use Kovu to get close to Simba in order to get revenge, but where will Kovu’s loyalties ultimately lie?

The plot is no great piece of innovation, but it does allow for a nice developed cast, solid pacing and a strong climax. It does not have the stature, production values or smartness of the original, but few can have expected it to. Released shortly before Disney’s traditional animation department went into its 2000s slump, it could perhaps have had a little more heart and soul, but for what it is, it could certainly have been far, far worse and I for one rate it highly.

Piglet’s Big Movie

During Disney’s early-2000s slump, it may be easily forgotten that Piglet’s Big Movie got released in cinemas, unlike most of the studio’s adaptations of their lucrative Pooh franchise.

I saw it on July 20, 2003, and was unimpressed: ‘Went to see Piglet’s Big Movie. I didn’t think it would be so bad, especially as The Tigger Movie managed to capture Milne’s style, had wonderful music and showed how dear the originals were to the team (particularly in the splendid end sequence). But sadly, this latest offering is disgraceful - in particular, the poor, poor story, shackling together bastardised versions of some Milne excerpts, surgically removing all the most charming parts (Rabbit’s plan, for instance), mixing in unlistenable, whiny, tuneless songs by Carly Simon, and even appending a terrifying credit sequence of her gurning and looking decidedly washed-up. We went home laughing about how sub-par it was, sad to say.’

This was the problem with the Disney of the period – when Pixar were going from strength to strength, it should be noted. You didn’t know what you were going to get, or when they would decide a film was a mistake and more or less bury all traces of it. DisneyToon was established just to churn out poor direct-to-video cash-ins, sometimes getting big-screen releases. Winnie the Pooh would seem a safe property, but as this film makes clear, it is also easy to make a mess of.