Elio Review: Pixar’s Newest Sci-Fi Adventure Has Plenty Of Imagination, And It Makes Up For A Choppy Story

In directors Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, and Adrian Molina’s Elio, one can recognize a number of the core elements that helped establish Pixar as one of the world’s greatest animation studios. It has a universal and powerful theme that drives the story (examining what it means to feel alone); it has spunky and memorable protagonists and antagonists; and while the animation style isn’t anything one would think of as revolutionary, there is wonderful character and production design. Those who recognize themselves in the material will certainly find themselves getting emotional, and those tears come packaged with healthy doses of joy and awe.

And yet, I simply like Elio more than I love it.

Golden Record, he becomes obsessed with extraterrestrials and passionately works to try and call out to other worlds so that he can find others with whom he can connect.

It turns out to be an extremely well-timed obsession, as it is during this period that aliens from an interplanetary society called the Communiverse discover Voyager 1 and begin to make contact with Earth. Elio is sneaking around the Air Force base where Olga is stationed when the communication is heard but dismissed, and when he is left alone, he records a message to be sent back. This ends up helping him achieve his goal of being abducted and meeting aliens… but things quickly get out of control when he lies about being the leader of his planet and he puts himself in the position of negotiating with a hostile alien named Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett), who is aiming to destroy the Communiverse after being rejected for membership.

While Elio has strong themes, its storytelling is choppy.

It can’t be denied that Elio has something to say about loneliness – a relatable feeling whether you’re a pre-teen who has been recently been orphaned like the protagonist or simply find yourself sans company on a Friday night. Its number one objective is to have the character find connections in the cosmos while understanding that he needs to forge them at home. The arc is clear, but the movie takes shuffling steps to traverse it, and not everything clicks together properly. For example, the big lie that he is the leader of Earth doesn’t feel like it fully jives with his desire to live among species from other worlds; it registers more as a “first thought” trope that easily generates needed conflict for the story.

Along the young hero’s journey, he develops a delightful friendship with Glordon (Remy Edgerly), the son of Lord Grigon who doesn’t share his father’s aggressive attitude, and it proves to be the highlight of the movie, but that strong plot development is outnumber by others that feel undercooked – including Elio having a weirdly quick stint at a boarding school, Olga becoming paranoid when Elio is replaced by a clone, and a negotiation that devolves into a fake kidnapping.

Elio has a wonderful vision of the cosmos distinct from WALL-E and Lightyear.

“Undercooked” is also the word I would apply to Elio’s efforts when it comes to world-building, as there is unfortunately a lot more telling than showing when it comes to the full scale of the Communiverse and the society ruled by Lord Grigon, but there is also no shortage of unique sci-fi spectacle from the same studio that brought us WALL-E and Lightyear. It certainly distinguishes itself from those movies with wild designs and cool ideas.

I walked out of Elio wanting to see more of the Communiverse in part because what is shown is a perfect blend of fascinating and beauty that inspires that kind of wonder – from the vast communal spaces to the massive waterfalls in what’s revealed to be the bathroom. Ooooo (Shirley Henderson) is an adorable, blue, gelatinous supercomputer with a fun quirkiness that helps the eponymous character adjust to the wild environment into which he has been thrust, and there’s nothing not to love about the floating Universal Users Manual (Bob Peterson) who would love to explain the meaning of life but instead has to field questions about gorillas fighting chimpanzees.

Kudos must also be offered for tremendous use of medium where alien biology and physicality are concerned, as animation frees the movie from being biped-heavy; the animators clearly took inspiration from the microscopic world, deep sea creatures, bugs and plant life, and pure imagination in creating a community of extraterrestrials that looks wild and bizarre but don’t cross the line into off-putting and gross (this is a film for kids, after all).

The experience of Elio is like sitting in a beanbag chair. It looks comfy and fun, but when you actually plop into it, there’s a struggle to find a comfortable position. It’s mildly disappointing as an original title from Pixar being released as sequels outnumber new ideas on the company’s upcoming slate, but a middle-of-the-road title from one of the best active studios is still pretty good.