Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch

Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch is a 2005 direct-to-video animated film and the fourth (chronologically the second) installment in the franchise.

Plot

At the start of the movie, Stitch is having a nightmare about turning bad again and causing destruction to Earth. After Stitch wakes up, Lilo tests his goodness level by having him do a few good deeds. Discovering that they are late for hula class, they use their hovercraft to get there.

While at the hula class, Kumu announces that Lilo and her classmates have to prepare to perform at the local May Day festival. Each student is required to create an original dance. After the hula class ends, Mertle insults Lilo, causing them to have a fight, but after taking pictures of the brawl, Stitch forgets to flush the evidence. Kumu thinks that Lilo is not ready for the competition because of the fight with Mertle, but Lilo says that she is ready and "triple promises" to be good.

While preparing for the competition, Lilo and Stitch have a hard time coming up with ideas, and Nani wants them to enjoy their family fun night. While watching Them! (film clip courtesy of Warner Bros.) on family fun night, Stitch's past comes back to haunt him and he goes berserk in the house. It seems that after Stitch was created, Jumba did not get a chance to fully charge Stitch's molecules before they were both arrested by the intergalactic police. At first, this glitch causes Stitch to revert back to his old destructive programming, but it will ultimately destroy him if Jumba cannot create a fusion chamber before Stitch's energy runs out for good.

Meanwhile, Stitch's uncontrollable destructive behavior is driving a wedge between him and Lilo and ruining her chances for success at the hula competition. Lilo and Stitch try getting inspiration for their hula, but Stitch keeps malfunctioning because of his molecules. Because Lilo is so concerned about winning the competition, she fails to notice Stitch's glitch and does not understand that the trouble he's causing now is not his fault. She's too busy trying to get him to help her and completely neglects helping him.

Eventually, the two devise a hula based on the legend of Hi'iaka. Lilo gets increasingly mad at Stitch as he ruins their practice sessions. To make matters worse, Jumba is having problems creating the fusion chamber due to the fact that he doesn't have the proper alien technology to build it and has to try building it using ordinary household objects. However, just before the competition, Lilo and Stitch make up and Jumba finally completes the fusion chamber. Then, Stitch has another one of his fits and accidentally scratches Lilo's face; this upsets him so much that he decides to leave Earth, believing himself to be "too dangerous". Lilo finally realizes that something is terribly wrong with Stitch, and in the middle of her performance, she runs away to help him.

As Stitch attempts to leave Earth, Lilo and the rest of the family desperately try to get him back so that they could re-charge him. But Stitch has another outburst, which causes him to crash the spaceship in the Hawaiian mountains. Lilo rides over to the crash site in a mini space scooter, she finds Stitch close to death and stuggles to get him into Jumba's fusion chamber. Sadly, she's too late by the time she places him in the machine and Stitch dies. Then Lilo tells him she kept saying how she needed him but he needed her more, and that he's her ohana, and that she will always love him, and then cries, but with her (and everyone else's) love for him, Stitch is revived, leading to a happy ending and the family (along with David who was completely neglected by Nani throughout the film) performs Lilo's hula dance together on the empty stage of the competition. Nani then tells her their mother should be proud of her and a star twinkles in the sky to prove it.

Cast

Dakota Fanning as Lilo Pelekai
Tia Carrere as Nani Pelekai
Chris Sanders as Stitch
Kevin McDonald as Wendy Pleakley
David Ogden Stiers as Dr. Jumba Jookiba
Jason Scott Lee as David Kawena
Emily Osment as Additional Voices
Jennifer Hale as Additional Voices
Derriqua Dorsey as Additional Voices
Paul Vogt as Gator Guard and Various Voices

Experiments mentioned

Stitch (626)
Gloomy (136)
Flashbomb (146)
Hotl (157)
Sprok (231)
Futurehole (279)
Gellasifier (286)
Stringulator (289)
Spunky (305)
Lotuseater (349)
Punk (407)
Little Dorrat (472)
Twitch (481)
Midasminus (559)
Lardo (574)
Gunner (614)

Continuity Issues

The film seems to overlook the continuity established in the PlayStation 2 video game, Disney's Stitch: Experiment 626. In this game, set before the events of the first film, Stitch is apparently fully charged and wreaking havoc in outer space. This plot is also evident in the deleted scene entitled "Stitch's Trial" shown on the first Lilo & Stitch DVD.
- It is also retconned with Disney Adventures Magazine, where Jumba created Stitch and 625 helps him, but in the movie, how Jumba created Stitch is much different and when Jumba was caught, 625 and the other experiments are nowhere to be seen.
The layout of the house has changed, but this is because Lilo & Stitch: The Series was not created by Chris Sanders, it was created by Jess Winfield, who most likely did not know the layout they were giving it in Lilo & Stitch 2.
It can be noted as an inconsistency that in Lilo & Stitch: The Series, Stitch mostly talks in his native alien language, yet for most of Lilo & Stitch 2 (and the English dub of the Stitch! anime), he can speak in fluent English.
Despite these differences, it appears that Disney has retconned Disney's Stitch: Experiment 626 and that Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch stands in continuity, appearing after the first installment, and prior to Stitch! The Movie.
- However, in the Stitch! anime 3rd Season two-parter "The Day Stitch Was Born", Stitch, Yuna, and Pleakley go back in time, accidentally delaying Past Jumba's creation of Past Stitch, causing Stitch to glitch as he is slowly being erased from history. At the end of the episode, Past Jumba completes Past Stitch and had him fully charged, thereby restoring present day Stitch. Also, Past Jumba and Past Stitch were not arrested at the end of the episode. However, since the anime has been confirmed to be non-canon, this never happened, so Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch is still part of the canon continuity.

The Origin of Stitch

Included on the DVD release of the film is the animated short The Origin of Stitch. The short has a total running time of 4:35 minutes and serves as a bridge between Stitch Has a Glitch and Stitch! The Movie (and Lilo & Stitch: The Series). In the short, Stitch discovers Jumba's secret computer that reveals what creatures Jumba had used to create Stitch, and also hints at his other 625 experiments. Stitch is scared to find out what a monster he is, only for Jumba to come in and explain how he found love when he met Lilo. The short was directed by Mike Disa and co-directed by Tony Bancroft.

Canon

Due to the events in the 3rd Season anime episode "Birth of Stitch", there is very little doubt that the events of Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch cannot possibly be part of the primary canon universe. Whether the events took place in an alternate universe as secondary canon or simply were prevented from ever happening is undetermined as of yet.

Trivia

This is the shortest film to be rated PG by the MPAA Rating System.
When the film aired on Disney Channel it was presented in its original letterbox picture as opposed to the pan-and-scan version shown on standard definition pay-per-view.