'Elio' Review: Pixar’s Cosmic Misfit Misses the Mark, but Shines in Surprising Spaces

Elio

In theaters

Voice Cast: Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldana, Remy Edgerly, Brad Garrett, Jameela Jamil, Shirley Henderson & more

Directed by: Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, Adrian Molina

Rating - *** (3/5)

Pixar has long been the spiritual custodian of improbable pitches made irresistible. What if your toys had lives of their own when you left the room? What if your feelings had personalities, squabbled among themselves, and orchestrated your emotional responses like a boardroom meeting gone rogue? The house that gave us Inside Out, Coco, and Wall-E has never been afraid to bet big on bizarre. And so arrives Elio, the latest in Pixar's animated catalogue that feels preposterous in concept, peculiar in execution, and deeply heartfelt in its ambition.

But here’s the thing about Pixar: even their misses feel like imaginative swings. Elio, about a lonely boy mistakenly identified as the ambassador of Earth by a confederation of alien civilizations, leans into its otherworldliness with the confidence of a child who has just duct-taped a cape made of soda tabs to his back. Whether it soars or stumbles, that bravado is worth dissecting.

Misfit in the Milky Way

Elio, our young protagonist, is not your textbook space hero. He is not brave, nor skilled, nor particularly self-aware. He is an awkward, isolated child who fantasizes about worlds beyond the one that keeps letting him down. In Pixar’s tradition of misunderstood leads who long to escape their mundane existence, Elio falls squarely in line. However, unlike Woody or Remy or Riley, Elio feels less like a fully formed character and more like a narrative placeholder for an idea the filmmakers wanted to explore but never fully grasped.

He is abducted by a group of well-meaning, candy-colored aliens from a peaceful galactic body called the Communiverse. The twist? They believe Elio is Earth's representative and must speak on behalf of all humanity. What follows is a series of negotiations, confrontations, identity crises, and interstellar pageantry that occasionally sparkle but never quite combust.

Pixar’s Candy-Colored Crisis of Identity

On the surface, Elio is a charming attempt at blending intergalactic diplomacy with the inner turbulence of a child yearning for connection. It is a film dripping with visual candy. From neon planets to sentient user manuals shaped like fluttering holographic cards, Elio is easily among the most visually arresting Pixar features to date. The production design is layered with the chaotic imagination of a child scribbling his own Star Wars in the margins of a school notebook. Alien species range from a sassy telepathic worm voiced by Jameela Jamil to a hulking, gravel-textured being brought to life by Matthias Schweighöfer. Every corner of the screen holds detail. Perhaps too much.

The problem is not a lack of imagination, but an overload of it. With a runtime of just 93 minutes, Elio introduces far more than it can explore. Characters are introduced and discarded with the attention span of a sugar-rushed toddler. Worlds blink in and out of relevance. Fascinating concepts like universal diplomacy, interspecies coexistence, and Earth’s flawed place in the cosmos are barely skimmed before being tucked behind chase sequences and comic detours.

Of Mothers, Monsters and Mistaken Identity

Elio’s relationship with his aunt, Olga, grounds the narrative with some of its strongest emotional beats. She is portrayed not as neglectful but overwhelmed, an aunt who clearly loves her nephew yet struggles to meet him where he emotionally resides. The film hints at their shared loss, at the burden she bears as both stand-in parent and government employee, but it never quite peels back the layers of their dynamic. There is no denying her devotion. What the film struggles with is explaining how Elio arrived at such intense emotional disaffection, and why his yearning for escape feels so existentially urgent.

Enter Lord Grigon, voiced by Brad Garrett with a theatrical grumble that seems to channel every Disney villain from the VHS era. Grigon is a militant outsider desperate to join the Communiverse, and he stands as the film’s major antagonist. His scenes feel like a different movie altogether — an operatic space opera crash-landing in the middle of a coming-of-age tale. Still, he offers the film some narrative propulsion, even if the tonal shift feels jarring. At one point, Elio, in a truly Spielbergian moment of peril, faces near-death and emerges with a mysterious blue eyepatch that serves more narrative function than actual injury. It is a fun contrivance, and in a movie this saturated with visuals, it earns its place.

The Weight of Whimsy

What Elio ultimately struggles with is internal coherence. It juggles grief, alien diplomacy, social isolation, and childlike wonder without allowing any single thread the time it deserves. It gestures toward deeper questions: What would a child say if tasked with representing Earth to the galaxy? Can empathy be taught across species? Why do we dream of belonging elsewhere? But these questions are largely rhetorical. The film prefers movement over meditation. The sheer momentum of the story prevents introspection.

There are glimmers of the Pixar magic that audiences adore. A glowing user’s manual that contains the secrets of the universe but bores Elio to tears is a hilarious, Hitchhiker's Guide-style gag. The homemade cape, assembled from household junk, is a masterstroke of design, embodying the inventive absurdity of childhood dreams. But these moments serve more as dazzling detours than structural support.

A Galaxy Far Too Full

The screenplay, credited to Julia Cho, Mark Hammer, and Mike Jones, often reads like it is trying to please multiple masters. It aims for humor that lands with both the elementary school crowd and their guardians, while also tiptoeing around larger themes like diplomacy, war, and personal identity. The result is a film that feels paradoxically both overthought and undercooked.

The fact that Elio was initially shepherded by Coco writer Adrian Molina before being taken over by directors Domee Shi and Madeline Sharafian might explain its uneven texture. There is a sense that multiple creative visions were being reconciled, not always successfully. The film wants to be both an emotionally sincere narrative about a boy and his mother and a satirical take on cosmic bureaucracy. It ends up somewhere in the middle — entertaining, poignant, but tonally scattered.

Belonging Beyond the Stars

And yet, despite its faults, Elio does resonate in its quieter moments. Its most poignant quality lies not in what it shows but what it evokes — the slippery ache of wanting to belong somewhere, anywhere. That is a sentiment that transcends plot holes and pacing issues. For children watching, Elio’s journey is an empowering tale of being seen, even if by mistake. For adults, it is a gentle reminder that sometimes, our wildest dreams of escape are really just a search for connection.

Pixar has never shied away from melancholy, from the idea that joy and sadness are inextricable. Elio taps into that vein, even if sporadically. It may not land with the emotional gut punch of Up or the intricate brilliance of Inside Out, but it occupies a space between whimsy and wistfulness that is uniquely its own.

Imperfect but Inquisitive

So, does Elio qualify as one of Pixar’s greats? Not quite. But it is far from a failure. It is a flawed but earnest addition to the studio’s ever-curious catalogue. It entertains. It provokes thought. And at its best, it reminds us that the desire to run away often masks a deeper longing to be embraced where we already are.

In a time when Pixar seems to alternate between sequels, spin-offs, and ambitious originals, Elio feels like an honest, if slightly miscalculated, attempt to return to the roots of imagination. It is a cosmic fable for the kid who stares at the stars and dares to believe they are waiting just for him. And in that dream, Elio finds its most authentic orbit.