‘Elio’ Review: Pixar’s Sweet, Safe Space Adventure Isn’t Exactly Out of This World

In Pixar’s Elio, the eponymous young hero (voiced by Yonas Kibreab) gets his wish of being abducted by aliens, and is promptly treated to all manner of otherworldly sights.

The Communiverse, an airy floating hub for the galaxy’s best and brightest, overflows with extraterrestrials of every imaginable shape, color, texture and method of communication (one spits out balls rather than speak words). They have access to amazing technologies like a “liquid supercomputer” that’s basically a floating Siri on steroids, a machine that can spit out clones, a Universal Users Manual that knows the meaning of life. For Elio, outer space is everything that cold, drab Earth isn’t, and it’s no wonder he’s loath to return home.

If only the film itself were half so, well, alien. Instead, watching from our humble blue marble, Elio feels just a tad too familiar in its sights and story beats to seem totally fresh. Directed by Adrian Molina, Madeline Sharafian and Domee Shi, Elio is a perfectly nice kiddie sci-fi adventure that does everything a movie with that description is supposed to do. But much like Elio, I frequently found myself longing for the more transportive experience, of the sort that Pixar used to make a house specialty.

The screenplay, by Julia Cho, Mark Hammer and Mike Jones, finds a recently orphaned Elio struggling to adjust to his new life with his aunt (Zoe Saldaña’s Olga), an Air Force officer who herself is having a difficult time suddenly learning how to parent. Lonely and adrift, Elio becomes obsessed with the idea that if no one on this planet seems to want him, someone on one of the galaxy’s 500 million others might — and he seems to be proven right when the Communiverse, having learned of humanity from the Voyager Golden Record, beams him up.

Initially, Elio tries to fit in, passing himself off as the leader of Earth in hopes of gaining permanent membership there. But it’s with Glordon (Remy Edgerly), the similarly sweet-natured but misunderstood son of a vicious warlord, Grigon (Brad Garrett), that Elio really finds the connection he’s looking for, forged over PG shenanigans like drinking way too many neon, crazy-strawed beverages and riding Communiverse waterways like they’re waterslides.

Will their budding friendship transform both of their lives for the better, making each of them feel more confident and less alone in the universe? Will their combined forces save the day by preventing Glordon’s dad from laying waste to the Communiverse? Will Elio then, despite the thrills he’s enjoyed in space, come to a better understanding of the real if imperfect love that Olga has been offering him from Earth all along? Well, that would be spoiling. But you can probably guess.

There’s plenty to enjoy about Elio. Its most striking shots include ones of the Voyager on its journey, looking tiny and alone against the unfathomable vastness of space — and they look even cooler in 3D, where the void seems to stretch in every direction.

Their starkness makes the busyness of the Communiverse something of a letdown, filled as it is with bizarre yet oddly unmemorable creatures who look like they could have slithered over from the setof Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. But Glordon, the most important of the aliens, looks crafted with love. Like so many of Pixar’s finest creations, he is a marvel of texture, his slug-like body somehow rendered leathery and scaly and hairy all at once, with feathery tendrils that quiver adorably when he’s happy.

Perhaps the movie’s most interesting flourish is the horror influence it wears proudly on its sleeve, without letting things cross over into family-unfriendly terror. So tender-hearted Glordon has teeth that suggest xenomorph DNA but uses them only to smile, not maim, and a habit of swaddling his visitors in spider-like silk but only to soothe, not trap. And while the cloning machine tends to spit out copies too uncannily agreeable to seem real, they’re also too cheerfully helpful to be scary.

If Elio’s plot points are predictable, they also check every box they’re supposed to, in a reasonably efficient 100 minutes. You’ll chuckle at Elio’s attempts to get abducted by parking himself next to a giant “Abduct me!” drawn in the sand, and cluck sympathetically at his confession to Glordon that he fears “there’s nothing about me to want.” You’ll probably get misty-eyed at the reconciliations and goodbyes you already see coming, and smile at a mid-credits glimpse into the characters living their best lives.

Where I never found myself, however, was surprised by any particularly clever insight, or moved by any powerful wave of emotion, or delighted by some daring and original twist. Elio is too straightforward for that, too pat and by the book. The characters are endearing but thin, flattened by a story that favors forward motion over slower, deeper development; their bonds are similarly hazy. Even the happy ending seems rooted less in choices that make sense for them than in a desire to acquiesce to formula. It doesn’t make the film any less sweet, but it does make it register less meaningfully.

All Elio wants is to know, through all his wild misadventures across the stars, is that he’s not alone, that there are others like him and others who might like him. The letdown of Elio is that it seems to feel the same way.