'Elio' Review: Pixar's Latest Is a Sweet Family Drama But Far From Out of This World

The space-set action adventure has a stellar script and animation, but the beats come too quickly

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Disney and Pixar continue to be at an interesting crossroads in their relationship. The animated production company once known for cutting edge technology and inventive storytelling still hasn’t seemed to recover 100% from the pandemic. Despite the sleeper hit Elemental in 2023 and Inside Out 2 in 2024, more often than not Pixar gets lost in the shuffle of Disney’s other animated features. Pixar’s latest, Elio, is the only movie coming out from the studio this year—in a move inspired to return to a “quality first” principle as opposed to hitting a deadline—could very well be the next Elemental though it holds more in common with the likes of Luca or Disney’s own CGI feature, Strange Worlds.

Elio Solis (Yonas Kibreab) has lost both his parents and is being raised with his aunt Olga (Zoe Saldana), an orbital analyst at the local military base. The lonely Elio believes the only place he’ll find true acceptance is in outer space and begs any wayward aliens to come for him. The aliens do come and take Elio away, but under the belief that he is the leader of Earth. The group known as the Communiverse want to make Elio one of their ambassadors. Elio plays along for a while, but when he’s tasked with making sure interplanetary warlord Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett) leaves the Communiverse alone, he’ll have to find a way to stop a potential interstellar war.

There’s several threads tied together in Elio that, on their own are interesting, but feel shortchanged when tied into the knot that is the actual movie. Elio is a shy, lonely little boy whose parents died in some unknown incident—bad enough that he’s referred as “the boy whose parents died”—and lives with his Aunt Olga. Right away there’s a familiarity on par with a reverse Lilo & Stitch, but there’s the bare minimum of insight into Elio and Olga’s relationship. We know she spends her days monitoring the skies for space debris and has eschewed joining the military’s space program to care for her nephew. But there’s only about 20 minutes to establish her absenteeism and his problematic nature. Elio laying on the beach with a makeshift sign—”Aliens, abduct me, please”—is hilarious and leads to a great fight scene that shows off his inability to make friends.

During a trip to the local air and space museum Elio learns about the Voyager satellite and its Golden Record, a series of recordings sent out to space as a message for any signs of intelligent life to learn about Earth. For Elio, this gives him hope that he’s not as alone in the universe as he thinks. This is Elio’s most fascinating plot point. Elio believes that there is a world out there that could accept him, a world where he finds community. But like most of Elio’s narrative beats this only serves as a means to get to the bright colors and curveless landscape of the Communiverse which, stylistically, is akin to the afterlife in Soul or the various towns in Elemental. That’s not to say it’s not gorgeously rendered, just derivative. However, Communiverse is bright, shiny, and tactile. There’s so many things I’d love to see rendered physically. It’s certainly a beautifully sensory place.

The various alien ambassadors he meets aren’t particularly distinct, outside of their vocal distinctions, and it’s unnecessary to really get to know them as their goal is obvious: if Elio can get Lord Grigon to go away, he’ll become a Communiverse ambassador and live there forever. This is when Elio’s true plot kicks in. Lord Grigon is an aggressive blowhard who declares that if the Communiverse won’t let him into their group he’ll take it (sound familiar?). Through Elio’s interactions with Grigon the little boy learns about Grigon’s son, Glordon (Remy Edgerly), a soft, worm-y sweetheart who doesn’t want to be a war machine like his dad. Does Gordon look like if a Dune sandworm and things from Mickey 17 had a baby? Yes. Is it utterly adorable? Damn straight! And what’s amazing is how much expression the movie renders out of Glordon, a character with no eyes.

The animation and father/son story makes this come off more like a continuation of Luca. Both stories are about lonely boys, a forbidden friendship, and issues of prejudice. Not to mention the characters here look like carbon copies of the buck-teethed characters in that previous feature. It’ll be exciting to see Pixar’s Gatto in 2027 if only because it looks like a different form of animation. But the voice cast is fantastic, particularly Kibreab and Edgerly. There’s a lot of florid, overdramatic lines perfectly suited for kids who love drama and they have such a flair for it. Elio’s special language, known as “Elioese,” is a lot of fun and Kibreab just knows how to add a hilarious flourish to his dialogue. But it’s Edgerly and how he conveys Glordon’s innocence that sticks with you.

Glordon and Elio have the sweetest relationship, even if it feels like we’ve gone a long way away from where we started. While Elio is bonding with Glordan, Aunt Olga is spending time with a clone of Elio who is presented as the perfect child. Elio looks in on his Aunt from time to time, getting progressively more jealous, but since there was little dynamic between the pair before this it’s hard to necessarily care. There’s far more development between Glordon, Elio, and Lord Grigon. It’s easy to see wherein the various different screenwriters came into this as the various narratives all seem cleanly demarcated to move from A to B. The narrative doesn’t feel so much like one cogent story as various chunks created when the initial narrative is backed into a corner or didn’t have enough meat on it to sustain things.

This becomes a problem during the third act, when Aunt Olga is finally integrated into the Communiverse story. But even then there’s a race to wrap up her storyline with Elio and return to what’s happening with the Communiverse. Things just seem very unbalanced or, if anything, better suited to a TV series than a feature film.

Elio is a charming little delight, but it never rises beyond this. This isn’t a soon-to-be Disney/Pixar classic and holds more in common with smaller films like Luca or Soul. The story is interesting, but the script adds in too many subplots to make anything feel central. This is a story made in pieces and while some pieces are fascinating and fun to watch, it’s frustrating that the whole doesn’t work as well.

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Grade: C

Elio hits theaters this Friday.