Flak Magazine: Review of Lilo & Stitch, 6-28-02

When Dreamworks' Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron opened last month, futurist critics announced the death of traditional hand-drawn animation. Computers would replace the archaic technique of creating an image on paper, transferring it to transparent cels and again onto film. The box office receipts for the same studio's computer-animated Shrek simply proved the point. But then along comes Disney's Lilo & Stitch, a traditional animation that can only be described as wonderful and the kind of splendid family fare that used to tentpole the entire Disney corporation. Lo and behold, it's not computer-animated. So is it a phoenix, or just late to its own funeral? Or have reports of traditional animation's death been greatly exaggerated?

Lilo & Stitch doesn't just use traditional hand-drawn animation, it excels at it. The story of a troubled young Hawaiian girl who adopts a destructive, fluffy alien is told in luscious yet concise images. All of the backgrounds are done in stunning watercolors, a lost art in today's animation. They create a Hawaii rich in texture and life without pulling attention away from the characters. The human and alien figures have sweeping lines and curves, giving them a weight and mass computers will need years and millions of dollars to imitate. It's a kind of animation for its own sake, unburdened by minute detail yet requiring the kind of skill impossible to mimic in any Saturday morning spin-off.

With quality traditional animation like Lilo & Stitch still being made, it seems strange that the industry — and critics — feel they need to move on to computer animation. Most of the problem stems from the split personality of film — half art form, half industry. During the summer, of course, the industry side takes over. Opening weekends and busted blocks get front page coverage. Franchises are born or expanded. And, right or wrong, industry has always relied on the idea of technological determinism — each new technology leads to greater efficiency leads to new products and so on. Computer animation has obvious advantages on an industrial level: Character wire frames can be directly downloaded into plastic toy molds; shots can be re-tinkered for television framing; 3-D shows can be made for theme parks.

Yet technological determinism is absurd on an artistic level. Photographs never secured more space on gallery walls than paintings. Computer-created holograms will never receive the kind of respect given to a delicate etching. Anyone who says that art is a linear progression forward does a disservice to the very idea of art. So, while more powerful computers churn out more complicated animation programs and textures, it's a lie to say this "advances the art of film." The industry may advance, but art and story are more hindered than helped by new technologies, in that they spread resources thin and distract artists from the basics. Experimentation with new technologies is good, but often it tempts artists to betray their vision. (That Pixar has managed to keep their artistic vision while mastering an emerging technology is rare and exceptional.)

Lilo & Stitch provides the proof. It is a lovely, heartfelt film precisely because it stepped back from the spectacle of computer animation and focused on story and emotion. Budgetary concerns meant that the animators had to strip the frame of everything that didn't convey the story — patterns were simplified, extras don't move, leaves don't sway in the breeze. The film is all the better for it. It allows the movie to have a compact, fully realized design of its own, unlike recent Disney films. That design in turn serves the story, a change of pace in from blockbusters that use art direction to distract from bad plot.

Probably Disney's most frank discussion of broken families, Lilo & Stitch centers not around a king or princess or lost city, but a little girl drawn into her own eccentricities after the death of her parents. Instead of the guardian angel she wishes for, she receives a cosmic outlaw, a genetic experiment in pure destruction and mayhem wrapped in a cute, fuzzy bundle. The havoc he and those trying to catch him cause only further threatens to take Lilo away from her sister and guardian, Nani. Yes, it borrows heavily from The Iron Giant — broken family, child outcast, powerful alien without a memory — but that's the highest praise. It's a simple, clear story that doesn't need to rely on broad humor and prematurely outdated pop culture references. When Lilo wants pop culture, she turns to Elvis.

Often, the best art comes from stepping back from the rhetoric of inevitable advance. Industrial and critical pressures often need to be ignored by the artist, because both try to get a jumpstart and beat the future, while art must focus on the present to build a grander future upon it. Processors may get faster and hard drives might get bigger, but that has nothing to do with the simplicity and clarity of a good story. Nor do legions of artists animating sand in the breeze. A good movie like Lilo & Stitch comes down to good characters and respect to honest emotion. As long as there are artists with the skill to draw and paint and an understanding of story, hand-drawn animation will have a long and healthy life.

— Andy Ross (apross@earthlink.net)