It’s arduous to imagine that Lilo and Sew just isn’t a lot youthful than I’m, however it’s, considerably bizarrely, certainly true. The fashionable basic cartoon has been round for 20 years, and though it undoubtedly has its place as a fun-loving and lighthearted youngsters’s movie, I’m of the assumption that it carries an additional depth that has helped it stand the check of time.
Set in Hawaii and centring round a younger woman who makes unlikely mates with an alien, the 2002 film got here proper across the turning level of Disney – and children motion pictures on the whole – in the direction of a extra inclusive and deep agenda for its viewers. The early 2000s have been a time when filmmakers started to belief their audiences greater than they ever had earlier than, providing extra substantive takes and character depth in content material for youngsters.
Lilo and Sew arrived shortly after the discharge of Monsters, Inc. and proper earlier than Discovering Nemo, two of the opposite “nostalgia-films” of the period that concentrate on themes of discovered household. Undoubtedly essential to this wave of animated exploration, there stays one factor significantly particular about Lilo and Sew: its illustration of sisterhood.
Most individuals who’ve seen the movie can recall that the plot includes two sisters—Lilo, the kid and titular character, and her older sister Nani, who serves as her essential caregiver after their dad and mom handed away earlier than the beginning of the movie. That is, to me, the strongest relationship within the plot.
If you learn between the strains and pay extra consideration to the minor progressions of the story, one facet immediately noticeably is the battle that Nani engages in to maintain Lilo in her care and, extra importantly, to maintain their household unit collectively. They’ve to speak to a social employee (Cobra Bubbles), who visits their house to examine whether or not or not Nani is match to take care of Lilo. She works as a waitress to assist their life and does the whole lot in her energy to maintain Lilo from being positioned in foster care in what’s a stark reminder of a socio-economic society that always bypasses Disney.
This additionally brings in an exploration of the foster care system in America, and the missing nature of assist by means of social constructions for households and kids who want them—particularly Indigenous folks and communities like that of Hawaii.
One of many explanation why the sister relationship is so focal and so sturdy within the plot is as a result of it’s the essential familial and supportive relationship there’s. There’s a tragedy that looms behind their household – that of their dad and mom’ passing – and, due to this fact, it places their sisterhood in a unique place. They’re one another’s total household unit.
As somebody who has a youthful sister, I can attest that this film does sisterhood actual justice, just because I see of their bond a mirror of how so many individuals—myself included—would lean on their sisters, and let their sisters lean on them in a singular and caring bond in instances of loneliness and disaster.
One factor I don’t suppose folks realise about Lilo and Sew is that Nani is simply 19 years previous within the movie. She’s principally a baby herself, making an attempt to do the whole lot she will to take care of Lilo like she’s her personal as a result of, in a manner, she is.
Lilo and Sew tells a extra nuanced story than it’d lead you to count on at first look, and in doing so, it represents sisterhood astonishingly properly. It’s no marvel why a movie like this one has managed to face the check of time, even after two entire many years.
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