If you were to look at the box office this past weekend you would see a few interesting things. You'd see How to Train Your Dragon and Lilo & Stitch making heaps of money as a pair of live-action remakes. You would see Danny Boyle's long awaited zombie sequel 28 Years Later setting a franchise high. Then, you would see the latest Pixar movie setting a new all time low opening for the studio. That's right, even behind the original Toy Story, which lacked the brand awareness of Pixar and opened up the Wednesday prior to its opening weekend, somehow made more than the opening weekend of Elio. It's a bit of a shame too, as this was a pretty pleasant surprise to me.
The first poster and teaser for Elio were released back in 2023, so this has been on the radar for so long without releasing that I started fearing the worst. Pixar has leaned more on its pre-established properties quite a bit lately, with their last original being 2023's Elemental sandwiched in between Inside Out 2 and Lightyear, so while I had my hesitations I was excited to see something fresh from them.
As the title pretty obviously suggests, the film follows a young boy named Elio. When his parents pass away in an accident, Elio is sent to live with his aunt, an Air Force Major who wanted to be an astronaut but had to put that dream on hold to care for Elio. Feeling alone in the world, Elio becomes fascinated with space and the idea of aliens, so much so that he does everything he can to get abducted. When his dream comes true, he mistakenly claims himself to be the leader of Earth, putting him in the middle of negotiations between an intergalactic organization and a ruthless alien warlord who wants to be part of it.
In typical Pixar fashion, the main story of the film is really a means of allowing the character to find themselves. Elio feels alone so he is sent on a wild journey to learn his place in everything. It's standard fair for the studio but that doesn't mean it's a bad story by any means. You feel familiar beats and character dynamics but the characters are heartwarming enough that those familiarities are forgivable. A lot of the supporting characters are kind of just cannon fodder to deliver laughs, but Elio and his aunt Olga have a great dynamic, and the alien that becomes Elio's friend is also very sweet.
The animation as always with Pixar is a big highlight. I tend to not be a big fan of when they make films focused mostly on human characters, thanks in part to a lot of their best work being films about toys, monsters, fish, and rats, but I thought the human character designs looked really good, and there's a ton of creativity in creating all the different aliens. The kind of nebulous depiction of the alien organization's ship feels pretty reminiscent of the afterlife in Soul, but there's enough colour and vibrancy to make up for that.
While I certainly felt some emotion with the film, it does feel like it's following a formula a bit too much at times. With a fairly short runtime it flies past some plot beats, ultimately limiting how strong that emotional payoff can feel. That paired with how by the numbers it can feel leave the final product a good one but one that almost feels like it's telling you when to cry rather than doing all the work to manufacture those emotions, and in turn that emotional payoff doesn't reach the heights that we've seen Pixar hit. It isn't near the best Pixar has done but I'm still sad to see it perform so poorly, this is a perfectly good family film with a good amount of heart. 3.5/5
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