Cast: Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldaña, Remy Edgerly, Brad Garrett, Jameela Jamil, Shirley Henderson
Directors: Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, Adrian Molina
Genre: Animation, Family
In Irish Cinemas: 20th June 2025
Pixar’s Space Adventure Elio Loses Its Way by Abandoning Earth
Pixar’s latest animated feature, Elio, sets its sights on the stars but loses emotional grounding by not spending enough meaningful time on the planet its young protagonist is so desperate to escape.
The film follows Elio, an imaginative, alien-obsessed 11-year-old boy who, through a cosmic mix-up, is mistaken by an intergalactic council as Earth’s official ambassador. It’s a whimsical premise — one that blends Pixar’s signature heart with sci-fi spectacle. Still, the story struggles to transcend its colourful surface, never quite reaching the emotional or creative heights the studio once regularly achieved.
From the moment we meet Elio — a shy, lonely kid grieving the loss of his parents — it’s clear we’re meant to root for him. He lives under the care of his no-nonsense Air Force aunt, Olga (voiced by Zoe Saldaña). He finds solace in fantasies about alien life, donning a cape and colander helmet, inventing his alien language (“Elio-ese”), and generally behaving like a sweet, eccentric outsider.
But while his quirks are endearing, they feel more like a collection of surface-level oddities than deeply rooted characteristics. Unlike Lilo from Lilo & Stitch, a similarly sci-fi-inclined child misfit from the Disney canon, Elio doesn’t have the sharp edges or idiosyncratic passions that make a character feel truly unique. Lilo was memorably weird — a little mean, deeply sincere, and obsessed with Elvis — a combination that made her think distinctly real. Elio, by comparison, feels too softened and sanitised, a character designed to be instantly likeable but not necessarily memorable.
Elio is a step up from some of Pixar’s more recent misfires, which have often felt either like derivative sequels or overly engineered to appeal to the broadest possible audience. Still, it’s hard not to feel a pang of disappointment watching Elio, a film that shows flashes of brilliance. Still, it ultimately plays things too safe, especially for a studio that once made global audiences weep over the lives of toys, rats, and robots.
Part of the issue may stem from the film’s troubled production history. Initially helmed by Coco co-director Adrian Molina, Elio was conceived as a profoundly personal story inspired by his childhood. However, amid Pixar’s shifting leadership priorities and a public pivot away from director-driven “personal stories” toward more broadly marketable fare, Molina was replaced by Domee Shi, director of Turning Red, and Madeline Sharafian, creator of the short film “The Burrow.” Core elements of the original script — including Elio’s mother working in the military — were rewritten during this transition.
That change is felt in the finished product. The movie doesn’t lack coherence, but it often feels like it’s skimming the surface of deeper emotional and thematic territory. The pacing is competent, and most of the story beats land well enough, but there’s a nagging sense that something more distinctive was left on the cutting room floor.
The film’s central hook — Elio’s longing to be abducted by aliens, born from his sense of alienation on Earth — has the makings of a rich emotional journey. When he transmits a signal into space, it’s answered by the “Communiverse,” a giant floating diplomatic hub populated by representatives from various alien species. They mistake Elio for Earth’s leader, and he dives headfirst into his new role, eager for validation and connection. It’s a setup ripe for emotional resonance and interstellar comedy.
Visually, Elio dazzles. While Earth scenes are rendered in the now-familiar soft, squishy Pixar style, the space-bound sequences pop with imaginative flair. The design of the Communiverse is full of colour and creativity, incorporating 2D graphic flourishes, candy-colored palettes, and surreal alien biology. Characters like the telepathic slug Questa (Jameela Jamil), the stony diplomat Tegmen (Matthias Schweighöfer), and the gooey cloning tech Elio uses for a quick cover-up back home all add fun, memorable touches. There’s even a subtle nod to sci-fi horror in the design and introduction of Glordon (Remy Edgerly), the son of the film’s would-be villain, Lord Grigon — part Giger, part Bowser, and all comic menace.
But despite the visual inventiveness, the world-building feels oddly hollow. The Communiverse lacks the specificity and internal logic that extraordinary Pixar worlds possess. The alien council members are more quirky décor than meaningful characters, and the political machinations Elio gets caught up in are too vague to invest in. Grigon, while amusing as a blustery, warmongering dad, never poses a real threat, and his arc is so heavily telegraphed that even young viewers might see the redemption beats coming from a light year away.
Ironically, though, the bigger problem may be back on Earth. For all of Elio’s time among the stars, its emotional core — the boy’s struggle with grief, belonging, and connection to his aunt — remains underdeveloped. The film hints at thematic parallels between Elio’s desire for alien acceptance and Grigon’s struggles with his son, but those connections are more suggested than explored. Olga and Elio’s dynamic is too formulaic to resonate, their interactions echoing the familiar trope of the “tough guardian and misunderstood child” without enough nuance or fresh detail to bring it to life.
Saldaña’s performance doesn’t help matters; her line delivery often feels detached, lacking the emotional warmth or tension needed to give Olga dimension. The setting, a featureless suburbia, offers little texture, and Elio’s social isolation is reduced to the standard-issue mean kids rather than something more emotionally or culturally resonant.
As the story builds toward an emotional climax and a dramatic choice about where Elio truly belongs, the payoff feels more obligatory than earned. Rob Simonsen’s score swells with the expected sentimentality, but without a strong foundation in Elio’s personal life, the pathos doesn’t quite land. It’s hard not to imagine what Elio could have been had Molina’s original vision been fully realised — a sharper, stranger, more emotionally resonant tale that took the personal just as seriously as the fantastical.
In the end, Elio is a pleasant enough outing: visually engaging, occasionally funny, and anchored by a charming vocal turn from young actor Yonas Kibreab. But in striving to appeal to everyone, it ends up saying too little about anyone in particular. By sidelining the specificity of its main character’s emotional journey in favour of broad sci-fi whimsy, Elio floats a little too freely in space, untethered from the gravity that once made Pixar’s best films soar.
Overall: 6.5/10
Movie Reviewer
