It’s felt a little like Disney is on its back foot in the post pandemic era. The Star Wars experiment has been almost completely relegated to its streaming service, the MCU has more misses than hits these days, and their live action remakes like Snow White have been financial fiascos. Pixar is one area where they have been able to find success, with huge numbers from Inside Out 2, and solid legs on even something the critics were less joyous on in Elemental. So it’s an area where they’re willing to be more experimental, which is always nice to see.

It’s just a shame Elio doesn’t have the delight of the golden era of Pixar, things like Wall-E, Ratatouille, and The Incredibles pushed the boundaries on what a family animated could be. Elio feels positively rote in comparison, and the animation department is getting lapped by Dreamworks, both in terms of the brightly colored 3D renderings like Super Mario Bros, and edgy experimental pieces like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, The Mitchells Vs The Machines, and of course Spider-Verse. It’s hard to stick up for a movie that simply “looks good” and “is cute” when other animation studios are on the absolute cutting edge of what cartoons could be.

Elio is the protagonist of the picture, an orphaned boy who is taken into custody by his aunt who works for the Air Force (Space Force technically but they’re just an unnecessarily rebranded branch of the Air Force so I’m sticking with reality) and is forced to take care of her strange alien obsessed nephew. Every day Elio walks out to the beach to try to be abducted to another world, to a world that hopefully wants him, as he doesn’t have friends and feels like he is a burden around his Aunt’s life.

Elio does indeed get his wish and is abducted by a galactic space council of aliens who are in the midst of peace talks with a different war mongering extra terrestrial. Elio volunteers for the task of navigating these talks as a way to join the council permanently, to avoid going back Earth ever again. Eventually he meets a young alien member of the militarist tribe who fits as well into his society as Elio does on Earth. The two are fast friends, and this relationship is the center piece of the film.

It makes sense that at a time when the male loneliness epidemic is taking up talking points in all aspects of media that Pixar and the directing team they assembled would want to speak on the idea of young boys making friends. And the concerns surrounding the movie have nothing to do with the subject matter. If anything it winds up feeling like the two boys don’t get their time in the sun, they’re not on screen together for very long. Especially when compared to something like Luca, a forgotten Pixar film from the pandemic, their relationship doesn’t feel as strong as the two fishboys from the prior picture. Or even as effective as Onward, something that also got swept up in the COVID-19’s memory hole.

It’s hard to be upset with Elio, while it lacks the ineffable magic of some of the greats, it’s still nice to see original concepts hitting the big screen, an increasingly rare event. And the directing trio that Pixar assembled is largely new to the job. Madeline Sharafian has directed a handful of popular short films, and this is Adrian Molina’s first crack at the bat of sitting in the big chair. Only Domee Shi has directed a feature length animation before, and it’s good to see Elio being released in theaters, as opposed to being shoved onto Disney+ for the algorithm to sort into obscurity, never to be remembered again. Her wonderful first film Turning Red befell that fate, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, let alone a talented film maker like her.

There are moments of pure joy, and there are strong jokes throughout, but Elio just feels like it comes up a little short, and lacks the magic touch that Pixar is often capable of distilling. The big emotional moment is successful, to be sure, but it can’t be said that it’s the most successful version of the “Pixar weepies.” Elio simply winds up being a functional version of what a Pixar could and should be.

3/5