Elio

With Pixar currently needing to earn back the interest of casual audiences since most of their new films are Disney+ exclusives (effectively lowering their status from the heart-tugging mature sibling of Disney to that of a slightly obscure relative), their newest release, the 2025 sci-fi family comedy, Elio, was probably not the film to come back to theatres with. This wasn’t to say the film looked bad per say, 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 such a small harmless flick, it’s the cards that were dealt, and Elio sadly didn’t 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 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 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 down, Elio comes across Grigon’s young son, Glordon (voiced by Remy Edgerly), who’s much sweeter than most of his kind and shares in Elio’s conflicting 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 on Earth behind if he does.

Being one of Pixar’s lowest box office openings of all time, Elio was not set up to have a good launch, and it tragically wouldn’t have been so detrimental if released during any other period in Pixar’s history. As its own movie, Elio is a perfectly passable kid’s adventure 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 not based on a pre-existing franchise or following a recent trend, actually breathing some originality in a sea of repeats and recycles. 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 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 Earth sounds like it could be a fun, charming, imaginative experience, and yet it’s never able to reach its full potential because of how mangled the story is. This is likely due to the film’s original director and story writer, Adrian Molina, dropping out of the project, and leaving it 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 strong projects and are good at their craft, but considering this picture seemed heavily inspired by Molina’s own life experiences, 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, 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 that doesn’t use its premise very effectively. The pacing is extremely fast and jumps through plot points in rapid succession, which while allowing it to sidestep its less-than-interesting cliches, also means there’s no time to build essential character dilemmas or 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 to be that interesting, but in spite of all this, the film really isn’t that bad and does find its footing the longer it goes on. Even if it goes by very quickly, it can slow down for some softer moments, the screenplay by Cho, Mark Hammer and Mike Jones isn’t that memorable from a comedic or dramatic standpoint, but doesn’t feature anything groan worthy either, and by the end, it might not provide enough to be an iconic Pixar flick, but has enough sentimentality to make it harmlessly adorable.

Pixar is usually 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 them 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 bad, and function fine within this set up, but they do feel very basic in comparison to past Pixar characters and leads. Elio 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 or dialogue to help him stand out. 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 drop in a heartfelt sequence, they don’t feel as warranted because these roles weren’t probably established.

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. It’s even worse for the humans, 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 adorable voice, the fact that they make a character without eyes still expressive is a nice feat, and he and Elio share a nice friendship, but it doesn’t 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 the studio is facing a bit of an issue in regard to how they’re designing some characters. Their more recent 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 springy 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 can still be grounded when 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, which are very appealing to look at and give the film at least a hint of a visual identity. The musical score by Rob Simonsen is also quite good and feels indicative yet never repetitive of other sci-fi scores, 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, but during a period where Pixar needs that kind of film to build its status back, it’s going to suffer for being smaller. While it’s hard to fully defend the film as it does lack a lot of the studio’s staple qualities which made their work meaningful and long-lasting, Pixar have 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.