The plot centres on the fiercely strong-willed Lilo (voiced by Chase), a lonely little Hawaiian girl who lives with her grown-up, equally forceful sister Nani (Carrere) after their parents were killed in a car crash. When a social worker (Rhames) comes to visit, Nani faces the prospect of losing custody of Lilo, so to calm her down a bit she lets her pick out a dog from the animal shelter. And Lilo picks Stitch (Sanders), an odd-looking blue "dog" who we already know is actually an escaped alien creature, genetically built to be indestructible ... and compulsively destructive.

Jammed with both colourful action for the kids and sophisticated humour for the adults, the film is thoroughly entertaining on several levels. The animation is exciting and textured, racing at the pace of an old Looney Tunes caper, and packed with witty throwaway sight gags to keep us from getting bored. Action scenes are genuinely thrilling, and the background scenery is lovely. Elvis tunes fill the soundtrack for no real reason at all, which is wonderful! And the characters are funny, pushy, individualistic and, most importantly, outside the usual Disney mould. When the message kicks in at the end it all goes rather squishy and nice. This shift is not remotely smooth; from spirited and nasty, both Lilo and Stitch become sweetly obsessed with being a happy family. Not a bad lesson, but with sharp characters like this it would have been much more effective to undercut it just a bit with something at least slightly depraved!