Elio

ELIO
2025 | Dir. Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, and Adrian Molina | 99 Minutes

"'Unique' can sometimes feel like 'alone,' but you are not alone."


Losing his parents at a young age, Elio lives with his Air Force major aunt but he struggles to connect with her and with other people, his only wish is to be abducted by space aliens. Against all odds, Elio makes contact with extraterrestrial life but is mistaken for the leader of planet Earth, receiving an invitation to join an intergalactic assembly of peaceful lifeforms. As a condition of his membership, Elio takes on a mission to negotiate with a merciless warlord but in the process becomes best friends with the despot's gentle son.

Elio is a gorgeously animated and emotionally stirring picture with an amusing sci-fi premise layered on top of a story centered on a child struggling with loneliness and feeling unwanted. While the picture immediately establishes Elio's challenging relationship with his aunt and his inability to make friends with other children, interpersonal conflicts that are all too relatable, once the story leaves Earth the emotional hook never goes beyond only just serviceable, somewhat underdeveloped in favor of delivering a fun though rather rote mistaken identity plot. Fortunately, the friendship between Elio and his alien slug friend Glordon is convincingly earnest and sweet, and the third act features some thrilling high-flying action and touching payoffs for the character arcs of Elio, his Aunt Olga, and Glordon, considerably improving the quality of the film as a whole.

Pixar Animation Studios shows off their technical prowess in Elio by way of some impressively dynamic lighting effects featured throughout the entire film, starting with little Elio's exploration of a darkened museum outer space exhibit still under construction at the start of the picture and carrying through the various colorful settings of the Communiverse. The designs for the extraterrestrial lifeforms are incredibly varied and every single one is lots of fun. The ethereal film score by Rob Simonsen is all around excellent.

Yonas Kibreab carries the film with a natural performance in the lead role, consistently hilarious and often incredibly affecting to movingly convey Elio's sadness. Remy Edgerly is infectiously cheerful as the happy-go-lucky Glordon, sharing fantastic comedic chemistry with Yonas Kibreab's Elio.  As the put-upon Aunt Olga, a rather manic Zoe Saldaña is very funny. Brad Garrett hams it up well as Glordon's ill-tempered warlord father.

Elio features the Pixar signature blend of heart and visual splendor that is sure to please children, adults, and inner children alike. However, while the story of a boy having a hard time finding his place in the universe is touching, it's nothing groundbreaking particularly by the storied animation studio's astronomical standards. In any case, as an average Pixar film that's finely crafted by any standard, it's a worthwhile uplifting experience that effortlessly tugs at heartstrings with plenty of humor and awe-inspiring imagery.


MID-CREDITS STINGER
Elio and Bryce chat with Glordon by ham radio.


FRAGMENTS
- Less a post-credits stinger than a promo, a brief teaser for the next Pixar film Hoopers plays after the closing studio logos

- Intriguingly, the original teaser trailer for Elio shows a few significant differences in character roles and premise from the final film -- America Ferrera plays Olga in the teaser instead of Zoe Saldaña who was originally written to be Elio's mother
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