In a time where live action remakes of animated classics are dominating the cinemas and even the mighty Pixar has to concede that sequels are the way to go if they want to keep earning big, it’d good to know that the animation giant can still put out a stand alone film – even if it’s had a torturous production. Of course, torturous productions aren’t exactly new with Pixar, as The Good Dinosaur and Brave also had a troubled history making their way yo the screen – but so what, so did Toy Story 2.
Of course, while the upside means that sometimes you have a movie that reaches the stars, other times it just means it plummets back to earth to provide a fun, but weirdly forgettable experience that’s a touching as it is disposable.
Which camp will Elio fall into? Well, let’s just say you’re going to have fun no matter where it touches down, but any rewatch value may be lost in space…
Orphaned Elio is living with his Air Force Major aunt, Olga, who is struggling to raise the boy as she’s forced to jettison her dreams of being an astronaut, but after the grieving child stumbles across a closed off exhibit about the Voyager 1 space probe, the little fellah becomes immensely awestruck at the thought of other lifeforms existing in the galaxy. Years later, it’s gone from an intrest to an outright obsession as the lonely kid, tired of all the loss and loneliness he’s experienced on earth, desperately wants to be abducted by aliens to being a brand new life.
Closed off and virtually friendless, Olga has no idea whatvto do with him, but after the airforce base receives a transmission of what could be a message of extraterrestrial origin, a sneaky Elio finally sees his chance and during a debate from the staff over what to do next, shoots his shot and sends a reply. This doesn’t stop him from getting sent away to a youth camp where he proves to be even more miserable, but matters take a stunning turn when alien life seek him out based on his awkward recording.
Elio is brought into the Communiverse, a union of various space being who have come together to share technology and ideas and who have created a utopia of colourful wonders that proves to be everything the boy has hoped for and more. Better yet, the head representatives of the Communiverse want Elio to be the ambassador of his planet; but this is where things start to fall apart. You see, the well-meaning aliens actually have no idea that he’s a child and worse yet, there’s another application to the join the Communiverse pending in the form of the towering, short tempered, armoured, warlord, Lord Grigon.
Accidently triggering Grigon’s legendary anger, it seems that Elio may have inadvertently cause an intergalactic snafu that could destroy everything the Communiverse stands for; however, after he makes a friend of Grigon’s son, Glordon, he has a shot at making things right.
It seems like once again I’m having to defend a Pixar movie that, if it was made by any other animation house, would be seen as a perfectly acceptable, enjoyable kids film that tweaks the funny bone and twangs on the heart strings in equal measure. And yet, like some other recent Pixar offerings like Soul, Luca and Elemental, Elio just doesn’t have that genre imploding excellence the studio brought with groundbreaking offerings like Toy Story, The Incredibles and Inside Out. Still, fun is fun and Elio is a ton of it, but after that bout of production issues that saw Coco co-director leave and be replaced by Madeline Sharafian and Turning Red’s Domee Shi, and America Ferrera replaced by Zoe Saldaña so late in the process, Ferrera’s voice can still be heard in the teaser trailer, you can’t shake the feeling that the movie is playing things fairly safe.
As I’ve said numerous times before, half strength Pixar is usually still better than other studios at full strength, but as we’re now living in a time where Into The Spider-Verse has kick started CG animation into bold new arenas, that’s a statement that’s increasingly proving to be a thing of the past. The emotional connection is present, but not all encompassing; the tone is nice and perky, but hardly memorable and when the jokes do land, it’s genuinely hilarious – but it’s not consistently a laugh riot throughout and it leaves us in a strange place where a perfectly serviceable movie just doesn’t feel enough.
Maybe it’s because that Pixar is now a victim of its own success; maybe it’s still trying to shake off their COVID period despite hitting it huge with Inside Out 2 or maybe the production issues prevented it from being full strength Pixar, but there’s a sense that for all of it good points – and it does have many of them – Elio is simply the studio on auto drive. On the other hand, if you accept that Pixar can’t be super innovative all the time, there’s plenty to embrace of a boy longing to be abducted by alien life. For a start, the performances are energetic and obviously the visuals are lush as hell (this is Pixar after all), but the backbone of the film comes ironically from the invertebrate space slug, Glordon and the friendship he fires up with the lonely earth-boy, it’s just a shame that the movie takes so long with the set up to get to it. But once it does, Elio kicks into gear with a third act that’s far more consistent than the first two and the whole thing feels like some large, unofficial love letter to Joe Dante’s Explorers which also dealt with blossoming friendships between different species – hell, it even has a huge, domineering alien father figure messing things up
In a weird turn of events, where Pixar manages to excell the most (other than somehow getting you to get all weepy over a space slug with an overbite like Bruce The Shark), is in the moments when the studio tries it hand at a spot of cosmic horror. Obviously, Pixar’s cribbed the odd horror reference before (Toy Story 3’s practically loaded with them), but here they prove to provide Elio with it’s best moments. A sub-plot concerning a clone that’s covering for Elio delivers some of the funniest PG rated body horror you’re ever likely to see (the joke involving Olga and a stolen strand of the clone’s hair is legitimately genius) and the movie also gets good milage out of Glordon’s icky physiology when Elio has to climb inside him to avoid a torrent of lava.
You’re always garrenteed a good time with Pixar, but a good time isn’t what the studio built it’s reputation on and while it may seem unfair to judge Elio on anything else other than it’s own merits, comparing it to Pixar’s other triumphs proves to come naturally. However, that’s not to say that the friendship between two boys from incredibly different backgrounds doesn’t bring all the laughs and ugly crying you’d expect, it’s just that it feel lightyears behind some of the competition.
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