Since there’s pretty much nothing important for most of us to do during quarantine, we humans are forced to fill our time with frivolous activities.

For many of us, that means transferring our entire lives onto Animal Crossing. But for professional animator Hailey Lain, frivolous quarantine activities entail writing a massive takedown of Disney’s Lilo & Stitch and posting it on social media.

In normal times, a post like this would stay forever hidden in the bowels of Tumblr. But these times are anything but normal, meaning that even casual Lilo & Stitch fans have more than enough pent up energy to get legitimately upset about this random, albeit in-depth, critique of a movie that came out 18 years ago.

Lain’s critique is both incendiary and incredibly bad. Her thesis, initially laid out in a cartoon, is that “Lilo & Stitch is the worst Disney movie ever.” Most people familiar with Disney’s history would likely reserve that spot for Song of the South because of the blatant racism, but that’s neither here nor there.

The main problem with Lain’s critique is that it hinges on her assessment that Lilo is a “brat” who never gets a proper comeuppance, and therefore the movie’s moral message is flawed.

“Lilo isn’t just the bullied weird kid. She’s a brat. Her first instinct when somebody says something she doesn’t like is to get violent… and it may seem funny on the screen, but this sort of behavior is NOT funny in real life; and if you think it is, there is a real problem there.”

Now might be a good time to remind folks that Lilo is a 6-year-old child suffering from the traumatic loss of her parents in a car accident, and when she “gets violent” in the movie, it’s in response to a girl making fun of her dead mother. Lain is right that it’s “not funny.” But it’s not supposed to be funny. It’s supposed to be sad and realistic. Traumatized children often display behavioral issues, and painting a 6-year-old traumatized child as a spoiled brat is a pretty strange angle to take.

Lain continues:

“Lilo is horrendously ungrateful for everything Nani sacrifices for her, and gets bitter and spiteful when she’s called on it, so much so that the child throws a tantrum. Lilo is of the mindset that it’s Nani’s job to clean up after her messes, and takes that entirely for granted. And the message of the movie, “family means nobody gets left behind,” underscores this and even says that it IS the family’s job to fix its members’ messes… without holding that family member responsible or accountable.”

A 6-year-old child suffering from trauma most likely doesn’t have the emotional maturity to recognize the sacrifices that someone else might be making for them. In this case, a lot of the burden falls on Lilo’s older sister, Nani, who takes care of her. But while the situation is certainly not fair to Nani, that hardly means Lilo should face any sort of comeuppance. Nani took guardianship over Lilo knowing that life would be a difficult journey for them, and yes, when your family member is a traumatized 6-year-old you do, indeed, try your best to fix their messes.

Lain’s critique goes on in this vein, as she lays out her idea for an alternate narrative where Lilo is forced to reckon with her own awfulness and take responsibility for ruining her sister’s life. Her essay fails to convey any actual flaws in Lilo & Stitch, as it mostly just extrapolates on how she would have written a completely different movie.

Ultimately, Lain concludes that her version “would be a story of personal growth, of how to face your own demons and how to treat your loved ones with the respect they honestly deserve, how to show gratitude when somebody makes a sacrifice for you! But instead, we get ‘you should love and take care of your family no matter how they abuse you and take you for granted.’ What a HORRIBLE message!”

And then she adds a kicker:

“At any rate, it’s no wonder people like this movie – it’s so incredibly indulgent and reinforces the notion that a person doesn’t need to be responsible for themself, because somebody else will fix every problem they ever have… what a blissfully irresponsible message. Watch out for people who get offended at this sort of critique, and who react highly negatively when somebody insults something they like – it often means they’ve attached too much of their identity to that thing, and feel personally called out when somebody points out that it’s a bad message!”

There’s a lot of unpack here, so let’s start with the assertion of “abuse.” The suggestion that a young, traumatized child with behavioral issues is abusing their caretaker by acting out is absolutely ludicrous. An assertion like this suggests a severe lack of empathy and understanding of how the death of a parent can affect a child. Lain’s entire issue with the movie seems to hinge on her failure to grasp the fact that children realistically lash out in response to trauma.

But the personal note at the end takes Lain’s critique to a whole new tier of “trash take.” The entire point of Lilo & Stitch is that even in the face of great loss, your family has your back. According to Lain, however, personal responsibility is of the utmost importance, even for very young children, and anyone who enjoys a movie about a young girl finding happiness after the death of her parents must be someone who hates personal responsibility. Moreover, anyone who doesn’t like her take must have tied their identity to Lilo & Stitch.

Okay then.

In fairness to Lain, she later retracted her personal attack paragraph. She also further clarified that Lilo is, indeed, realistic, but that she still stands by her argument because she believes that a fictional traumatized child should “serve as a role model for anyone viewing the story, rather than just being relatable.”

Except, no, your personal preference about whether or not a character should be a role model has no argumentative bearing on whether or not a story is good. In short, Lain’s entire argument falls apart, essentially boiling down to: “I would have written a different story.”

Lain also mentioned that she’s been getting death threats over her post. So all critiques of her essay aside, it’s seriously uncool to send someone death threats over their movie opinions, regardless of how much you may disagree with them. Mature people don’t send death threats over bad movie opinions. No, mature people write long rebuttal essays, instead.