Review: Elio (2025)

Sometimes, a studio is a victim of its own success.  Pixar has created so many stone-cold classics in the animation genre that even a mediocre outing feels like a huge disappointment.  And while I'd argue that Elio is a perfectly fine animated film, I can see why so much about it is considered such even before getting into its anemic box office numbers.

Elio follows the titular character, Elio Solis (Yonas Kibreab), a young boy who longs to be abducted by aliens after his parents die and he moves in with his aunt, Olga Solis (Zoe Saldana).  Elio is an outcast who spends the majority of his time in his pursuit of abduction.  Eventually he actually is abducted and finds himself representing Earth as its ambassador in the Communiverse.  And I'll stop the summary there.

There are so many tropes in that short description of the film that it could easily be a dozen other films up until the alien abduction.  The film originally had a bit more characterization for Elio and you can feel the gaps in the screenplay (I won't go into details but the removal of said characterization was enough that original director Adrian Molina and original voice actress America Ferrera both left the project).

It's sad, because the film is missing a personality that it desperately needs for both its lead character and for its alien plot.  Several of the alien ambassadors are a marvel of animation, but 15 minutes after the movie it's almost impossible to name a single one of them.  Even the antagonist of the film is a stock character that's been seen a hundred times before and will be seen a hundred times after.

None of these criticisms are unforgiveable sins, they just add up to make this one of the lesser efforts from Pixar.  It's worth seeing, especially compared to the lesser efforts of the other major animation studios, but it might be that Pixar film that most people forget about.

6.5 out of 10