With Pixar currently needing to earn back the interest of casual audiences now that most of their newer films are Disney+ exclusives (effectively lowering their status from the heart-tugging mature sibling of Disney to that of a slightly obscure relative that occasionally spouts good advice when they take the time to visit), their newest release, the 2025 sci-fi family comedy, Elio, was probably not the film to come back to theatres with. Not to say that the film looked bad or anything, but most people thought it looked like charming junk food without much substance attached, and if Pixar wanted to regain their pedigree, comfort food wouldn’t be enough. While it’s unfair to place such a heavy burden on what is effectively just a small harmless flick for kids, it’s the cards that were dealt, and sadly it doesn’t look like Elio hit the jackpot.
After losing both his parents and being placed into the care of his Air Force Major aunt, Olga (voiced by Zoe Saldaña), a young boy named Elio (voiced by Yonas Kibreab) copes with being a social outcast who feels unloved by everyone by looking up to the stars, actively trying to get in contact with any alien species to come abduct him as he feels he’d fit in more on an alien planet than on Earth. With Olga planning to send him to a reform school to meet new friends, Elio manages to get a message out to the cosmos and is abruptly whisked off to the Communiverse, a meeting hub where alien species from across the universe meet together to share info about their planets, with Elio being chosen as Earth’s ambassador as they believe he is its ruler. Needing to keep up a façade in order to not be sent back home, Elio gets in way over his head when he is tasked with dealing with Lord Grigon (voiced by Brad Garrett), a bloodthirsty worm-like warlord who demands to be initiated into the Communiverse otherwise he’ll destroy everyone onboard. After failing to talk him out of his plans, Elio is thrown into the dungeons and comes across Grigon’s young son, Glordon (voiced by Remy Edgerly), who is much sweeter than most of his kind and shares in Elio’s complicated feelings regarding their parental figures which in turn leads to a budding friendship. Deciding to work together in order to prevent Lord Grigon’s hostile takeover, Elio may actually get his chance to live on an alien world, but along the way will release what he’s leaving behind on Earth if he does.
Set to be Pixar’s lowest box office opening of all time, Elio was not set up to have a good launch and the tragedy of the situation is that, at any other time in Pixar’s career, it probably wouldn’t be seen as so detrimental. As its own movie, ELIO is a perfectly passable kid’s film with nice visuals, a likeable cast and enough heart within its quirkiness to feel on brand for the company, but the messy story structure, blandly written characters, and minute sense of purpose leaves it feeling a little adrift.
One of the first major props this film deserves is that during the period of its release window (around the middle of June), it was one of the few films to not be based on a pre-existing franchise or one that’s following a recent popular trend, making it one of the only genuinely original features released during the season. This might be giving it a little too much credit however, as the idea of a boy interacting with aliens isn’t that special and the film is peppered with a lot of cliches and tropes that sadly make it come across as pretty generic, but the little touches that do feel different are noticeable. Creating an alien equivalent of the United Nations is a fun concept, literally using a story about aliens to highlight the struggles with ‘alienation’ is on-the-nose but appropriate, and having a little boy be the ambassador for the earth sounds like it could be a fun, charming and imaginative experience, and yet it feels like it’s never able to reach its full potential because of how absolutely mangled the story is.
This is likely due to the film’s original director and story writer, Adrian Molina, dropping out of the project, leaving the film in the hands of Madeline Sharafian (a first-time feature film director whose only previous experience was directing the 2020 Pixar short, Burrow) and Domee Shi (who previously rose to prominence as the director of the 2018 Oscar-winning animated short, Bao, and the 2022 Oscar-nominated film, Turning Red). Both women have been attached to good projects and are good at their craft, but considering this picture seemed heavily inspired by Molina’s own life experiences growing up on a military base, having that person absent leaves a giant hole that can’t be easily filled.
The trailers also didn’t help with the befuddlement, with each new teaser seemingly offering an entirely different direction and plot angle, and considering it took three years to officially come out (being delayed a full year after it was scheduled to come out in early 2024), it’s safe to assume no one really knew what they wanted to do with this idea. This haphazardly constructed story written by Molina, Shi, Sharafian and screenwriter, Julia Cho, feels like it was stitched back together with scenes and ideas from each version of the story, leaving the final product with a barely solid foundation and one that doesn’t use its premise very effectively. The pacing is extremely fast and jumps through plot point after plot point in rapid succession, which while allowing it to quickly sidestep some of its less-than-interesting cliches, also means there’s no time to build up essential character dilemmas or even basic story conflicts.
The first act is a little rough, with animation that feels overly frantic, characters that are hard to get invested in, and a set up that feels too predictable and basic to be that interesting. With all that said, the film really isn’t that bad, and it does find its footing the longer it goes on. Even if the film goes by very quickly, it does still slow down for some softer moments, the screenplay by Cho, Mark Hammer and Mike Jones isn’t that interesting from either a comedic or dramatic standpoint, but doesn’t feature anything groan worthy either, and by the end, it might not have provided enough to be incredibly memorable, but has enough sentimentality to make it harmlessly adorable.
Pixar is usually really great with their characters and in a strange twist of the norm, most of their leads were either adults or children dealing with teen or adult issues, which helped establish Pixar as a company that made films for both kids and adults. By contrast, Elio feels firmly based in the kid’s department and because of that, all of the characters act on a very predictably kiddish level without a ton of depth. They aren’t really bad, and they function fine within this set up, but for a company like Pixar where there should at least be some elevated sense of maturity, they do feel very basic by comparison.
Elio as a lead has a lot of hurdles to overcome because he initially doesn’t start out very likeable. This isn’t because he has any annoying or bad traits, but rather that he doesn’t feel definable at all, feeling like a very stock outcasted weirdo without any distinct personality traits or dialogue to help make him feel more unique. His drastic decision to abandon Earth feels hard to relate to because his problems aren’t properly mapped out nor is his relationship with his aunt, so even when the film does manage to get a few heartfelt sequences, they don’t feel as strong because these two characters weren’t probably established, so while neither is unlikeable, they won’t stand as very memorable Pixar leads.
The aliens have pretty fun creative designs, popping colors, and are voiced by funny people, but they’re also hampered by the lower-stakes script and shallower tone and don’t have that much of an identity outside of how they look. People like Jameela Jamil, Shirley Henderson, and Matthias Schweighöfer work well as some of the main aliens, and Brad Garrett is able to use his comedic chops to make an otherwise stock brutish villain more tolerable, but sadly none of them are really written to be that interesting, and it’s even worse for the people left on Earth, as they’re saddled with really generic archetypes, even simpler writing, and somehow even cartonnier animation (with a conspiracy theorist played by Brendan Hunt being the worst offender of this).
Glordon comes across as pretty cute thanks to Remy Edgerly’s very adorable voice, the fact that they make a character without eyes still expressive is a nice feat, and he and Elio do share a nice friendship, but it doesn’t really feel that special next to other cutesy kid friendships shown in other children’s films, so there’s little about these roles that stand out despite the cast all doing a good job.
Being a Pixar film, the visuals are expectedly nice, but what matters is how it manages to stand out. The more recent Pixar films that feature human characters like Luca and Turning Red have character designs that many aren’t the biggest fan of, with the larger teeth, shinier skin textures, and overly fluid movements putting people off and actively taking them out of moments that should feel dramatic. This isn’t a deal breaker as the characters aren’t badly designed and while a little over animated in parts, can still be grounded and slow when it’s required, but it might be time to change up the models as it doesn’t feel like a style that’s hugely beneficial to this film as opposed to the previous two where that style did match a little better.
The aliens are designed pretty oddly and yet still come across as expressive and fluid (Pixar have always enjoyed working with non-human characters more anyway), the colors are very nice, and the film’s sci-fi foundation opens up opportunities to include a lot of spacey and genre-appropriate tones like glowing lime greens, lava-lamp pinks and rich sea blues. The musical score by Rob Simonsen is quite good and feels indicative of other sci-fi scores yet never an exact replication, and some of the camera work and lighting choices feel like they pay homage to several popular science fiction films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Aliens and E.T, which leads to some really dynamic shot layouts and effectively ambient sequences.
ELIO from the get-go never felt like a Toy Story, Finding Nemo, or Coco level movie, but during a period where Pixar needs that kind of film to build its status back, it’s going to suffer for being smaller and effectively be viewed as lesser. While it’s hard to fully defend the film as a Pixar movie, it does lack a lot of the brand’s staple qualities which helped make their work meaningful and long-lasting, but at the same time, the studio has released far worse movies than this one, so calling it the black sheep might be going too far. Overall, Elio is a small film with a few nice moments, some pretty visuals and a good cast, but the plot is somehow both too miniscule and too all-over-the-place, the characters are pretty generic, and while occasionally tapping into that familiar sense of heart, doesn’t really have enough to feel out of this world.
