It’s a good thing Pixar has popular franchises such as Inside Out and The Incredibles to rely on, because the attempts to launch new original hits have largely been met with a “meh” from audiences. The problem is Pixar’s reputation is so great that expectations are incredibly high. It’s not enough to do a movie that’s simply “okay”, because it will always be deemed as a disappointment. It also makes things worse when a movie actually is just “okay”, which is where Elio falls. Prime Pixar material this ain’t.
Part of the problem, I think, is that original director Adrian Molina, who developed Elio from a very personal place, left the project and was replaced by Domee Shi (Turning Red) and Madeline Sharafian. Aspects of Molina’s original concept remain, but the lead character, a grieving 11-year-old boy obsessed with extraterrestrials, doesn’t feel at all like a real person. The script doesn’t do him any favors. Elio, still mourning the death of his parents, is cared for by his aunt Olga, who works on a military base and is struggling to connect with him. Olga was originally conceived to be Elio’s mom, and that, too, was altered in a major shift from the core concept.
The result is that Elio is a Pixar movie that barely holds together, and because there’s no stable concept creatively, it’s not particularly funny. It’s hard to make jokes about characters you don’t understand. At the screening I attended, relatively packed with kids and their parents, it was dead quiet and there were even a few walkouts. It wasn’t for lack of trying. Elio, when he isn’t being stubborn and rude to others trying to help him, comes across as a creation for a different movie where his over-the-top reactions make more sense.
It’s a shame because there’s some decent stuff that could’ve made for a more enjoyable experience. Elio gets his wish to be abducted by space aliens after accidentally making first contact. They take him to the Communiverse, an intergalactic consortium comprised of aliens from many planets, pooling together their knowledge to enrich the universe. The art design of the Communiverse is gorgeous, with Pixar continuing to be the best at imagining vivid worlds full of distinctive places and background characters. The screen is full of cool extraterrestrials of different shapes, sizes, colors, and unique languages. It would’ve been great to spend more time just basking in it.
Elio lies to the Communiverse and says he’s the leader of Earth, and they welcome him into the Communiverse. That pisses off the other candidate, the warmonger Lord Grigon, who threatens to destroy them all. It’s up to Elio to convince him to stop, which is no easy task. Along the way, he befriends Grigon’s son, Glordon, who is about as different from his father as possible. He doesn’t want to don his armor-like carapace and become a fighter. This storyline, while paying off nicely in the end, feels like a lighter version of Hiccup and Stoick from How to Train Your Dragon.
My favorite part of Elio doesn’t even involve the title character all that much. Mirroring the 1984 classic (and one of my childhood favorites) The Last Starfighter, a cloned version of Elio is sent to Earth in his place and he, of course, is better at being Elio than Elio himself. Olga gets along with him, too, which only makes Elio more determined than ever to stay in outer space.
Voicework by Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldaña, Remy Edgerly, Brandon Moon, Brad Garrett, and Jameela Jamil is solid, all par for the course from Pixar. Saldana replaced America Ferrera as the voice of Olga when the creative direction changed, but honestly, you probably couldn’t go wrong with either actress.
Elio has too much in common with 2015’s The Good Dinosaur, another movie cobbled together until it was left a shapeless, lifeless mess. This is far from the worst thing Pixar has ever done, but chances are we will be looking forward to Pixar’s next reliable franchise sequel rather than remembering Elio for anything.
Elio is in theaters now.
