★★½ (2½ out of 4)
Pixar doesn’t turn out many clunkers, though the recent “Elemental” came close. “Elio” falls about midway on the Pixar quality scale, which is good enough for lots of folks who’d like to take kids to a movie without being bored breathless. “Elio” passes that test, even for a hardened critical grinch like me. But Pixar has spoiled us with decades of classics. Good enough just won’t do.
As luck would have it, the movie is named after an 11-year-old boy named Elio. He’s voiced by Yonas Kibreab and he has a dream. He desperately wants to be abducted by aliens. For real. Not aliens from the Sci-Fi channel. Elio has his reasons; his parents were killed in an accident. (Note to whoever is in charge of animated family films: stop killing parents. Trauma is not funny for kids and especially not for parents who have to explain things.).
Anyway, back to business. Elio now lives with his Aunt Olga. She’s played by “Emilia Perez” Oscar winner Zoe Saldaña, which wouldn’t mean much to Elio but earns points from audiences who like to see a cardboard role voiced by an actress of genuine grit and grace. So why are Elio and his aunt fighting? Elio doesn’t understand why Olga, who actually works for the Space Force, won’t set him up with the Voyager program so he can rocket to the stars and bond with aliens. Does he really deep down just want to reunite with his parents in heaven? Thank you, Dr. Freud, that seems obvious.
In any event, Elio’s wish does come true, sort of. No, he’s not adopted by Steven Spielberg who knows a thing or two about world building. Instead, he sends a message into space (don’t ask) that gets picked up by the Communiverse, a jumbo spaceship where heads of galaxies enjoy kicking back and discussing things, like the mistake the big alien kahunas made when they mistook Elio for the leader of Earth and invited him aboard.
Things get sillier after that, forcing Elio to intervene in a diplomatic disaster involving the vengeful Lord Grigon (a suitably over-the-top Brad Garrett), who rules over millions of alien worms on the planet Hylurg. These worms think they’re being unfairly sidelined in favor of other less icky heads of state.
What happened to Elio and his personal demons? It seems that the Communiverse at Pixar stopped, well, communicating. Scuttlebutt has it that original director Adrian Molina, who concocted the story out of his own Elio-like feelings, was replaced by two other creatives more compliant with new Pixar directives to avoid the personal in favor of stories with mass appeal. True or not, the existing “Elio” feels concerningly generic.
Happily, “Elio” never looks anything but fabulous. The pre-teen’s s bizarro adventures have an eye-popping grandeur to delight any kid’s wildest imaginings, with mind-reading worms, rock monsters and the sense of a world out of balance, exactly what Elio feels in a world without his parents. There’s even some parental conflict between Lord Grigon and his son Glordon (Remy Edgerly) to mirror Elio’s differences with his aunt.
No one wants to leave Elio lonely and rootless in a cold cruel world. But something is missing. On the outside, “Elio” looks spectacular in every sense of the word. On the inside there’s distraction where a child’s heart should be. It’s hard to split the difference.