Three years ago, Disney's franchise-founding film "Lilo & Stitch" took a hapa-haole translation of 'ohana (" 'ohana means family; family means nobody gets left behind") to a global audience of kids and young-at-heart viewers.

This time around, the Mouse risks invoking Hawaiian deities Pele and Hi'iaka to drive home an equally important lesson about love and devotion.

"Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch," a straight-to-DVD release, hits stores Aug. 30. The animated film features Dakota Fanning ("War of the Worlds") as the new voice of Lilo, along with original cast members Chris Sanders, Tia Carrere, Jason Scott Lee, David Ogden Stiers, Kevin McDonald, Kuwena Mook and Liliana Mumy.

Filmmakers and cast gathered at the Turtle Bay Resort yesterday at a Disney-sponsored event for roundtable interviews with international media, followed by photo opportunities with the celebrity voice actors, a lu'au and an evening screening of the film.

Despite a tight deadline and relatively austere budget, directors/screenwriters Michael LaBash and Tony Leondis said they made it a point to visit Kaua'i to get an up-close look at the island where the films are based.

Leondis said that it was during this trip three years ago that a tour guide told them the abbreviated story of how Hi'iaka went to Kaua'i to fetch her sister's love, the young chief Lohi'au.

In the most common telling of the long, complicated story, Lohi'au arrives in Kaua'i only to find that Lohi'au has died of longing for Pele. Lohi'au manages to restore his spirit to his body, but a misunderstanding pits Pele and Hi'iaka against each other, and Lohi'au is killed.

Eventually, Lohi'au is reclaimed from the underworld. Asked to decide between the two sisters, he chooses to remain with Hi'iaka.

The Disney reading is, of course, much cleaner — an affirmative story about the redemptive power of love.

The screenwriters incorporated the story as a lesson for the Lilo character, who is so engrossed in winning a hula competition that she fails to recognize that her beloved alien-pet Stitch is suffering through a serious molecular malfunction.

"We wanted to show Lilo as a true girl of Hawai'i who has grown up with these stories and respects their lessons," LaBash said.

While the translation of the myth might not be perfect, Leondis and LaBash said they did their best to represent Hawaiian culture in a respectful way and to ensure that the film didn't simply transpose a Mainland story onto a Hawaiian backdrop.

The filmmakers said they often ran ideas past Mock, a kumu hula who provides the voice of Kumu in the film, to see if they were appropriate.

"It has to be respectful or it doesn't work," Leondis said.

Lee, who flew in from the Big Island to help promote the film, said he agreed to reprise his role as David Kawena to help lend the film an authentic pidgin sound.

"With Tia and I, we gave it a nice flavor that's authentic enough but not unintelligible or too hard for the general ear to pick up," Lee said.

Lee, notoriously selective about his roles, said the film works in a similar way by sharing local-style values in a way that can be easily digested by a diverse, nonlocal audience.

"It's not necessarily the real thing, but it is a gentle, superficial way to accommodate people who aren't from here ... a way to educate them."

Tomorrow another Disney publicity event for the launch of LOST: The Complete First Season on DVD takes place at Turtle Bay.

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@honoluluadvertiser.com.