REVIEW: “Elio” (2025)
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| (Courtesy Reddit) |
Pixar Animation Studios is no stranger to changing directors and story elements for their movies during production. Their latest project—a sci-fi adventure comedy about a lonely boy who desperately wants to get abducted by aliens and gets his wish—was originally slated for a summer 2024 release. Then the writers and actors strikes the year before pushed back the release date, as did initial director Adrian Molina (who worked on Coco) being replaced by Turning Red helmer Domee Shi and that film’s story lead Madeline Sharafian.
While Molina is still credited as a co-director and the final film has received favorable reviews from critics and audiences, Elio has struggled at the box-office since its opening weekend at the end of June 2025, resulting in the lowest opening for a Pixar movie. The studio’s 2023 flick, Elemental, went through something similar at first, until strong word of mouth helped that film make a big comeback. It’s still a little too soon to tell if the same will happen with Elio, considering a recent article that the Hollywood Reporter wrote, about the complicated work behind-the-scenes. Based on the trailers alone, I wasn’t convinced that the movie would be great. Now that I have seen it, I do consider it to be a charming, entertaining, and visually delightful adventure. It’s also a better movie than people are giving it credit for.
The titular Latino boy on Earth (voiced by Yonas Kibreab) feels like an alien himself, still grieving the sudden loss of his parents, and feeling unwanted. Elio Solís is inspired by space voyaging and making contact with beings from other planets, much to the chagrin of his classmates and his long-suffering and impatient aunt Olga (voiced by Zoe Saldaña), an Air Force major who put her own plans on hold to look after him; she considers sending him to boarding school to get his mind straight. “Your life isn’t up there, Elio,” she tells him, “It’s down here.” This creates further estrangement in an already dysfunctional relationship—until she sees for herself an encrypted message from another world, and Elio suddenly acting “normal.” (I won’t reveal anything further on that last element, except that it sneaks up on you in more ways than one.)
Another thing that sneaks up on you—if a little predictably—is the unlikely friendship that Elio creates with a lovable misfit alien named Glordon (voiced by Remy Edgerly). Stealing every scene he’s in, how could he not be lovable? The insect-like creature wants his dad’s approval, much like Elio wanting to belong, and like Glordon’s father, a high emperor named Grigon (perfectly voiced by Pixar veteran Brad Garrett, originally as a comic relief before he was changed to the film’s main antagonist), who wants to join the exclusive, intergalactic Communiverse, but for the wrong reasons. All the other alien ambassadors (who mistake Elio as his planet’s leader) want to leave and not deal with the malevolent titan, until Elio decides to stand up to him—if only to avoid going back to earth, despite getting way in over his head and facing certain consequences.
While Elio has some exciting action sequences and some weird moments, it manages to balance elements of fantasy and reality very well. Rob Simenson’s wondrous and mysterious score has echoes of John Williams (a la Close Encounters or E.T.) and Jerry Goldsmith (a la Star Trek or Alien), whether for dazzling views of the cosmos from earth, or in how things get fantastical and highly imaginative from the moment Elio is beamed up, or when things gets real.
The visual metaphor of Elio’s eye patch (which makes him look alien, in a way), and in how he speaks his own language (“Elio-ese”), helps sell the story’s themes of being understood, valued, and loved (self-acceptance included). One heartwarming moment that made this writer well up involves unexpected sacrifice and vulnerability (“I may not always understand you, but I still love you”). All BTS controversy aside, Elio is still a touching story about connecting and reconnecting—some for the first time. It also puts a new spin (both spiritually and emotionally) on the old saying, “We are not alone.”
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