Elio is Pixar’s latest effort, and it surprisingly has much more emotion than the trailers give away. Sometimes, it has maybe a little too much emotion, but it still has enough balance to make it thrilling and funny.
The movie focuses on a young boy named Elio Solis (Yonas Kibreab) who lives with his Aunt Olga (Zoe Saldana) after the death of his parents. Olga is in the Air Force and once dreamed of being an astronaut. They visit a spacecraft exhibit where Elio becomes entranced by the possibility of other beings in the universe.
Elio decides to use ham radios to make contact with anything out there and at first, his efforts are met with no response and Olga tells him to stop the nonsense. One day when Elio goes to work with his Aunt Olga, he stumbles upon a device that can transmit messages to outer space.
Elio is punished by being sent to a camp, but one night he gets transported aboard a spaceship that heard his message, and he meets a group of colorful aliens known as the Communiverse, and they mistake him for being Earth’s ambassador.
The Communiverse is convinced to let Elio join them in their fight against the evil Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett), whose request to join the Communiverse was denied. Elio also befriends Grigon’s son, Glordon, who is the exact opposite of his father.
The movie has a lot of clever plot elements, such as making a clone of Elio to send home to his Aunt Olga, in which the clone is a perfect version of what she wants Elio to be. These scenes work both in terms of humor and help advance the plot.
Elio is a visually dazzling movie filled with a lot of amazing sights in the alien world, but as a story, I’m just a little concerned that the movie might be too melancholy for its target audience. It deals with loss and acceptance in a way that kids will understand and might even relate to, but it sometimes is a little too on the nose with its straightforward approach.
Kids might be looking for a jollier tone, and some scenes do deliver when we get to the alien world and the aliens try to comprehend Earth’s language. There’s also a scene where the cloned Elio disintegrates during a crucial moment in the story. However, a goofier nature might’ve been a good idea.
Still, Elio is entertaining enough to keep kids and adults occupied at different levels with its visual delights and message on the importance of family and sticking together.
