Director: Madeline Sharifian, Domee Shi & Adrian Molina
Starring: (voices of) Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldaña, Remi Egerly, Brandon Moon, Brad Garrett, Jameela Jamil
Certificate: PG
Run Time: 98 mins

Elio is the new Disney Pixar film and the first original work from the studio since Elemental in 2023, with Inside Out 2 a big win for the brand last year. Neither of those films were top-tier Pixar, in my opinion, with the last standout hit Soul all the way back in 2019. Elio has had a bit of a troubled direction, with Adrian Molina originally in the director’s chair but then vacating in August 2024 to go and work on the forthcoming Coco 2 (now there’s a sequel that really doesn’t need to happen). Domee Shi, who directed Turning Red and Madeline Sharafian, best known for her Pixar short film, Burrow, replaced Molina, with all three ultimately receiving a credit.

Elio follows the 11-year-old titular character, an orphaned boy (Yonas Kibreab) who doesn’t fit in among his peers and has a strained relationship with his Air Force major aunt Olga (Zoe Saldaña). He’s obsessed by the idea of discovering life in space and wishes he was abducted by aliens. After much effort, he achieves his wish when he’s picked up by the Communiverse, mistaken as the leader of Earth. He is swiftly tasked with proving his worth when a warlord named Grigon (Brad Garrett) wields trouble.

This is a bizarre film –  while on the one hand, Elio feels schmaltzy, predictable and tonally jumbled, it also has its tender moments and an amiable message. Unlike the photorealist animation Pixar has become famous for, this film is more vivid in its visuals, with a real clash of colours that borders on psychedelic. The script is sincere and the development of the relationship between Elio and his aunt sweet-natured, but it’s a shame the filmmakers feel the need to tell rather than show.

What I liked most about the film was how it explores the theme of loneliness and how this manifests within disability (Elio displays many autistic traits but the film doesn’t explicitly label him as such). This is the daring Pixar that’s seen so much success with its original concepts, and much in the vein of Inside Out 2 (in how it explores puberty), might explain why Elio is rather shambolically constructed because it’s being told from an unconventional perspective.

I can’t say Elio is representative of Pixar at its best – and I’m unlikely to rush to rewatch it. But you can’t deny that Elio is certainly original and ambitious, even if the film doesn’t completely land.