Leroy & Stitch

The final installment of the Lilo & Stitch franchise was released in the summer of 2006 as a Disney Channel and Toon Disney movie. Starring Chris Sanders, Daveigh Chase, Tia Carrere, David Ogden Stiers, Kevin McDonald, Kevin Michael Richardson, Jeff Bennett, Tara Strong, Rob Paulsen, and Zoe Caldwell, Leroy & Stitch was nominated for the Golden Reel Award.

Lilo (Chase), Stitch (Sanders), Jumba (Stiers), and Pleakley (McDonald) are honored as heroes by the Galactic Alliance as their mission to capture and repurpose all 623 experiments. Jumba is given the key back to his lab, Pleakley is offered a post as Chairman of Earth Studies at Galactic Alliance Community College, Stitch is made Captain of the Galactic Armada, and Lilo is made ambassador to Earth However, Gantu (Richardson) has decided to break Dr. Hamsterviel (Bennett) out of prison and force Jumba to create an evil twin of Stitch named Leroy (Sanders). Who is then cloned.

This is one of those films that has a great idea on paper, but is terribly executed.

 For every Lilo & Stitch installment, it seems like references to Elvis keep getting greater and greater. For instance, Jumba played “Aloha Oe” while he activated Leroy. And guess what the key is to stopping the army of Leroys? That’s right, Stitch getting on stage and playing the song. Normally, it’d be a pretty good Chekhov’s Gun. But here, it really feels forced.

And speaking of forced, Lilo’s rival, Mertle, is picked up by a Leroy and she thinks she’s having a nightmare. But she’s quick to turn that around and realize it’s not and then makes peace with Lilo. This is also completely out of nowhere. Not once had Mertle expressed any softening of her hatred towards Lilo and all of a sudden, she’s being chummy. This is poor writing.

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