Directors: Adrian Molina, Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi
Writers: Julia Cho, Mark Hammer, Mike Jones
Stars: Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldaña, Remy Edgerly
Synopsis: Elio, a space fanatic with an active imagination, finds himself on a cosmic misadventure where he must form new bonds with alien lifeforms, navigate a crisis of intergalactic proportions and somehow discover who he is truly meant to be.
It has finally happened: Pixar has found its own The Emperor’s New Groove. No, Elio is not like that film—a 2000 animated comedy that Vulture’s Bilge Ebiri once described as “an irreverent, pratfall-heavy, non sequitur” in Disney’s otherwise fabled ‘90s filmography. Elio has no pratfalls to speak of, is occasionally irreverent—almost by accident—and is absolutely a non-sequitur in Pixar’s recent slate of films, which has hit a rough patch with titles like Elemental, Lightyear, and Onward. I’ll also go on record as one of the few critics who believe Inside Out 2 is one of the most overrated films of the decade.
Elio doesn’t follow Pixar’s usual narrative arc, failing to forge a coherent connection to the studio’s defining theme of exploring the human condition. Instead, the story leaps into a visually dazzling, kinetic sci-fi fantasy that feels exhaustingly hollow. Let’s look at the setup: Elio (Yonas Kibreab), an eleven-year-old boy who has just lost his parents, is taken in by his Aunt Olga (Zoe Saldaña), who gives up on her dreams of becoming an astronaut to care for him.
The script, by Julia Cho (Fringe), Mark Hammer (Shotgun Wedding), and Mike Jones (Luca), never meaningfully explores Elio’s loss or the trauma of abandonment. These themes should be the emotional glue binding Elio and Olga together, but they’re only briefly hinted at in the opening and closing scenes. The script wanders aimlessly when it comes to an emotional trajectory. Elio feels lost, so he looks to the stars for connection, hoping to bond with aliens so he doesn’t feel alone. You’d think the script might tie this into the memory of his parents—the sky as heaven, a metaphor for grief, a theme of terminal loneliness—but it’s barely touched.
Then, Olga intercepts a message from an alien civilization called the “Communiverse.” Through a mishap, Elio mistakenly identifies as Earth’s leader and is beamed into space to receive their message. Unfortunately, he’s tasked with negotiating a truce between his new alien friends and Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett), a worm-like warlord in a Tony Stark-style Iron Man suit. Grigon wants to destroy the Communiverse—and Elio—until our young hero meets Glordon, an adorable alien worm creature who, it turns out, is the villain’s son.
This is where the story should focus, but it takes far too long to arrive, and the third act sidelines Glordon, who barely interacts with Elio. Directors Madeline Sharafian (Coco), Domee Shi (Turning Red), and Adrian Molina (The Good Dinosaur) fail to meaningfully connect Elio’s coming-of-age arc with the necessary emotional realism that Pixar is known for. If they tried, they didn’t make that connection resonate with the audience. By the time the film navigates its own cosmic whimsy and absurdities, there is a touching and beautifully realized moment about fathers and sons. Still, the Elio storyline is left cold, detached, and emotionally vacant.
And the journey to get there? Just plain weird. Most of the jokes fall flat, including supposedly irreverent moments like Lord Grigon blasting cute space dandelions from the sky. Glordon is the film’s breakout star—mark my words, plush alien worms will be a hot Black Friday item—but that feels like the movie’s larger purpose: to be a visually kinetic feast for the eyes, primed for marketing. It’s a film tonally out of sync from start to finish as if pieced together from ideas pulled from different movies and forced together like mismatched puzzle pieces that never quite click.
Overall, Elio reflects a new Pixar trend: underdeveloped, not fully realized scripts. I might call it an homage to the studio’s earlier work—if it didn’t feel so much like self-plagiarism of better efforts. At least the film is coated in that signature Pixar animation goodness.
If only it had the heart to genuinely tackle family issues, like the studio’s classic films did, with a little more heart and soul.
You can watch Elio only in theaters on June 20th!
