Lilo & Stitch (2025) (Movie)

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    David Hekili Kenui Bell, an Actor in ‘Lilo & Stitch,’ Dies at 46

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    Mr. Bell’s first role in a feature film was providing comic relief in the Disney hit.In Disney’s latest live-action remake, “Lilo & Stitch,” David Hekili Kenui Bell has a short but memorable role in which he is so bewildered to see aliens that he lets his shaved ice plop to the ground. The appearance was his first in a feature film.Mr. Bell, who had played minor roles in a few productions, died on Thursday. He was 46.His sister, Jalene Bell, confirmed his death on social media on Sunday and in a family statement that did not provide a cause of death.He was credited simply as Big Hawaiian Dude on his IMDb page, but on TikTok he referred to himself as the Shave Ice Guy.“Lilo & Stitch,” which is based on the 2002 film and the animated franchise, was released on May 23 and became one of the most profitable recent films as it raked in more than $800 million in sales.His role was part of a running gag in the franchise. In those moments, a sunburned character who is relaxing somewhere drops his ice cream when the aliens arrive.In one of two movie scenes where he appeared, the aliens startle him while he sits at the beach in a sleeveless shirt, with a towel on one shoulder and sunglasses atop his head. Predictably, he drops his shaved ice.“These damn aliens owe me a shave ice,” he captioned the scene on TikTok.In the original “Lilo & Stitch,” the man dropping the ice cream is bald and is often not wearing a shirt.Mr. Bell had also appeared in two episodes of a “Magnum P.I.” remake in 2018 and 2019, as well as in one episode of a “Hawaii Five-0” remake in 2014, according to IMDb. He was involved in the upcoming film “The Wrecking Crew,” about two half brothers solving their father’s murder in Hawaii, his page on the site said.He appeared in the “One Life, Right?” commercials for the Kona Brewing Company. The ads won a 2025 Pele Award, according to his sister and the organization’s website. The Pele Awards honor excellence in advertising and design in Hawaii.Outside of acting, Mr. Bell worked at the Kona International Airport near Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, according to the social media statement from his sister.Complete information on survivors was not available.To celebrate her brother’s life and express their grief, Ms. Bell said that she and her grandson went to get shaved ice.“David loved being an actor,” doing voice-overs and traveling as part of his work, his sister said. “The film industry and entertainment was so exciting to him.” More

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      ‘Lilo & Stitch’ Cast Discuss What Lured Them to the Live-Action Remake

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      Cast members from the original 2002 animated film and the live-action remake explain what lured them to — or back to — “Lilo & Stitch.”When Maia Kealoha learned that she was going to play Lilo in Disney’s live-action remake of “Lilo & Stitch,” she sobbed big, fat, happy tears.“That might be the first time I was quiet in my whole entire life,” she said of the video call with the film’s director, Dean Fleischer Camp, in 2023, when he asked her to be his Lilo.Kealoha, 8, is a big fan of the original animated film from 2002 about a destructive but adorable alien experiment named Stitch who crash-lands in Hawaii and befriends a young girl named Lilo.The film, which earned more than $273 million (or $484 million when adjusted for inflation) at the global box office, was one of the first Disney animated movies to be driven by a nonromantic story line. It also won praise for its strong female characters and nuanced depictions of Hawaii.“I’ve seen it 1,000 times,” Kealoha, who was born and raised on Hawaii’s Big Island, said in a recent video call. “It’s so good.”Stitch, unsurprisingly, is her favorite character. The rambunctious blue troublemaker also reminds her of someone she knows: Her 1-year-old brother, Micah Kealoha.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Lilo & Stitch’ Review: Creature Chaos

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      The live-action remake of the hit 2002 Disney film is mostly serviceable and often adorable, even if the best parts of the original got left behind.An interesting facet of this age of Disney live-action remakes is how the style and tone of these updates to children’s classics, reimagined decades later, can personify exactly how the sensibilities of mass entertainment have shifted since. From the opening moments of “Lilo & Stitch,” which mostly mirrors the content of its 2002 animated predecessor, the difference is clear: more speed, more noise and more hand-holding for the audience.To be fair, that is all particularly enhanced by a movie whose entire engine (and marketing) is fueled by a critter that wreaks mayhem and destruction at every turn. Here, things move at warp speed, even as the movie constantly trips over itself trying to pluck at the next heart string. But there’s just enough to make for a moderately fun, mostly serviceable and often adorable revamp that will probably satisfy fans of the original.Save for a couple characters added and subtracted, along with an amped-up climax, this update, directed by Dean Fleischer Camp, is largely faithful to the original, tracking the bond between Lilo (Maia Kealoha), an orphaned girl being raised by her older sister, Nani (Sydney Agudong), and Stitch (a returning Chris Sanders, who was one of the directors of the 2002 film), an incorrigible alien lab experiment that crash-lands in the jungles of Hawaii.On the run from the United Galactic Federation, Stitch poses as a dog and goes home with Lilo and Nani, using them as human shields against Jumba (Zach Galifianakis) and Pleakley (Billy Magnussen), two aliens tasked with capturing Stitch. As Nani struggles to raise her sister on her own and tries to prevent child services from taking Lilo away, Stitch only adds to the chaos. But for Lilo, a desperately lonely girl still grieving the loss of her parents, Stitch quickly becomes “ohana,” i.e. family, i.e. “nobody gets left behind.”This early aughts romp didn’t seem like an obvious candidate for Disney’s ongoing live-action redo campaign, other than the opportunity it presented to let such a memorable (and moneymaking) creature loose in the real world; the studio giant’s other remakes have been partly justified by either recreating vast and fantastical universes (“The Little Mermaid,” “The Lion King”) or dusting off classic storybook properties for a new century (“Dumbo,” “Pinocchio”). In this case, the unique visual splendor of the original — rendering Hawaiian landscapes in a gorgeous and idiosyncratic watercolor animation — is replaced by the easy blandness of a Disney Channel movie.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More