Over the weekend, my kids took me to see Lilo & Stitch. It had looked like fun in the advertisements and the animation lives up to Disney's highest standards, but I was unprepared for the effect the movie would have on me. Today I went to see it for the second time and came away more impressed than ever. There is a tremendous synergy between the two main characters and how their relationship transforms them both.
Lilo & Stitch is partly a 'coming-of-age' story for Stitch, but it's more than that. It is also about Stitch discovering that he can make choices that will determine his relationship with the world around him. The simple answer is that he is transformed by Lilo's love, but the deeper theme is that Lilo can understand his nature because of her experiences and personality. She has trouble responding 'appropriately' to her own feelings of alienation and unattachment, which allows her to appreciate Stitch's actions with insight, understanding, and forgiveness. As she tries to help Stitch, she has to approach her own feelings and deal with them. I found this synergy profoundly moving.
The other characters are equally well-turned: there aren't any two dimensional characters. At the movie's website they describe (in a horrid site that uses Flash to make it as difficult as possible to navigate the information) that it was a goal of the creators was to not have good guys and bad guys. (A better site about movie is 
this one. All of the characters have a mix of good characteristics and bad: heroic moments and blind failures. You can understand the motives of the players and why they act the way they do.
I can't remember the last time I wanted to see a movie for a second time in the theater. But this movie, I want to see yet again. I'm looking forward to it coming out on DVD. According to one rumor site, the DVD will out by December 10th. I'm marking my calendar!