Lilo & Stitch (2025)

2002 saw the release of Lilo & Stitch, which launched one of Disney’s most lucrative franchises that continues to see legacy support in some way, shape or form. As an anecdotal testament to this, I’ve attended the Animation Academy attraction twice on a trip the California Adventure park, where a Disney animator guides guests through drawing a character, and there was some crowd control for drawing Stitch in particular. 2025 eventually saw the franchise enter Disney’s recent push for remaking their animated films into live-action and/or very realistic CG, with the remake simply bearing the Lilo & Stitch moniker. As someone who is largely not a fan of this second wave of remakes, I was turned off enough by the announcement to not see it in a theater, but decided out of morbid curiosity to watch it anyway after it made its way to Disney+ just to see how bad it was. After satisfying my curiosity, I feel that skipping the theater was the right call on this one.

Stubs - Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2022) Starring Dean Fleischer Camp, Lesley Stahl. Voices by Jenny Slate, Isabella Rossellini. Directed by Dean Fleischer Camp. Screenplay by Dean Fleischer Camp, Jenny Slate, Nick Paley. Based on Characters created by Dean Fleischer Camp, Jenny Slate. Produced by Elisabeth Holm, Andrew Goldman, Caroline Kaplan, Paul Mezey, Dean Fleischer Camp, Jenny Slate, Terry Leonard Run time: 90 minutes. USA. Color. Stop-Motion, Animated, Comedy, Drama.

One of the surprises when the 2023 Academy Awards nominations for Best Animated Feature Film were announced may have been Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. Compared to some of the other nominated films, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, Turning Red and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Marcel was not as well-known.

The film, which took seven years to make, thanks in part to the stop-motion animation, is based on a trilogy of stop-motion animated mockumentary short films directed by Dean Fleischer Camp, who co-wrote the script with Jenny Slate, that were initially released in 2010. Originally shown at the Telluride Film Festival in 2021, the film rights were purchased by A24 films and released in the U.S. on June 24, 2022. A darling of the festival circuit, the film made $6.3 million during its theatrical release.

Dean (Dean Fleischer Camp), a documentarian, and his subject Marcel (voiced by Jenny Slate).