Lilo And Stitch: Film Analysis

Lilo and stitch is a movie involving a six year old girl, her sister, now guardian, and their new “Dog”(Poole, Spencer & Sanders, DeBlois, 2002). The movie begins in an alien intergalactic headquarters with the trial of a scientist for illegal genetic experimentation and creation of a being. During the trial we find out Stitch, although not yet named, is the experiment, the court finds the scientist, Jumba, guilty, and when they attempted to converse with Stitch he insults them, they label him an abomination and banish him. On his way to exile Stitch escapes and unintentionally crashes on earth, taken to an animal shelter. We are then introduced to lilo, late for a hula class. It is soon revealed that Lilo is not liked by her peers, and starts
Lilo shows some developments found in Piaget's preoperational stage of development (Berk, 2014, p 175 ). This can be seen in the movies as she is able to understand symbolism, such as when she drew a diagram of Stitch and his “badness” level, she could understand her drawing was a picture of stitch, but also a graph of one of his traits. She also shows an ability for make believe play as when she introduced her peers to her doll, and began to tell the story she had invented for the doll (Berk, 2014, p 175). In her introduction of the doll she also uses Animistic thinking in that she introduced the doll, and constantly referred to the doll as her (Berk, 2014, p 179). In fact when it comes to the doll, throughout the movie, she refers to the doll by name, and at one point tries to get Stitch to interact with the doll, as if it were alive, not just a doll. This can further be seen in the movie when Stitch was pulling on the doll she told him to stop hurting the doll. One other aspect of the preoperational stage she uses is magical thinking. In the beginning of the movie she is late to her hula class, her reasoning is that she had to feed pudge the fish as he controls the weather (Berk, 2014, p
It also is good for helping people understand trials others in lower income families, or families that are considered broken may have to deal with, as can be seen through Nani’s struggles. This film can also be used to highlight the troubles of a children who have experienced a high stress life event, differences in relationship between parent and sibling, the effects of peer acceptance or unacceptance, and community effects on children. While also being a nice heartwarming story of a family sticking together and finding new place and