Pixar‘s latest offering, Elio, takes us on a space-bound adventure of the titular character, who feels like he doesn’t quite belong on Earth with his aunt Olga (Zoe Saldaña) and longs to be abducted by aliens.
When aliens intercept Earth’s message to alien life from the Voyager, they send a simple response back, and Elio manages to sneak into an area of the military base where Olga works and send a response back.
That kicks us off as the aliens come to Earth and take Elio to a place called the “Communiverse” where ambassadors of intelligent life forms from all areas of space live and share knowledge and ideas.
All of these lifeforms appear to be peaceful, but Elio learns there is another candidate besides him to become an ambassador: Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett), a warlord who believes he has proved his right to join the Communiverse and threatens hostility when the ambassadors reject him for his aggression.
It then falls to Elio to convince Grigon not to act with hostility, a plot that leads Elio to meet the standout character of the movie, Glordon, son of Grigon, and another misfit like Elio.
I’ve been an avid Pixar fan since I was a young child, and nothing makes me more excited than a new masterpiece from the studio. Elio, unfortunately, is not that.
The main issue I faced with Elio is the lack of establishment of Elio as an outsider. There’s no evidence in his brief time on Earth to start the film that Elio is particularly concerned about trying to fit in, and he is shown obsessing about being abducted by aliens long before we get to see some elements of his outcast nature. Even when potential friends come to join him, he is the one pushing them away. Take that in contrast to a similar Disney character with Lilo, who actively tries to fit in with the other island girls despite their cruelty.
It also relies on a trophy scene where Elio overhears Olga talking about sending Elio to a boarding school in the fall because he has been so hard to handle. Really, the entire movie felt like the scenes between Elio and Olga were the script trying to force the issue rather than developing a more natural connection between the characters.
If you don’t really buy that conceit about Elio’s desperation for belonging, it’s hard to make the rest of the movie work. A lot of what follows is a bit more childish than some other Pixar fare, with cutely designed alien species immediately accepting Elio as the leader of uh-Earth and showing him beautiful, colorful sights around the Communiverse.
Grigon is a bit of a joke villain that never really feels like much of an intimidating threat, even when he is actually destroying much of the Communiverse. He is comically sensitive for a warlord, which betrays the sense that he is a warlord in the first place.
Without spoiling the movie, the resolution feels a bit forced, too. There’s not much to go on to convince you that Elio and Olga’s reunion is quite enough to fix everything.
Fortunately, that scene is beautifully animated enough and well-acted enough to pull half the weight it should, despite the story not setting it up properly.
For all the beautiful colors and wonders of space, this movie is at its very best when depicting Elio on the beach at night. Those shots do better than anything else in this movie at establishing the kind of dark emptiness inside of Elio and it’s a shame that the necessity to market things toward children seems to lead Pixar from ever lingering to long in that space—you’ve always got to get back to the poppy colors, smiles and humor.
There’s a much better movie here somewhere, but sadly, much of it has been traded for a trope-heavy plot that never feels quite fulfilling.
