'Elio' Review

Oh how the mighty have fallen.

As I walked into a completely empty theater to watch Pixar’s latest offering, I asked myself: how did we get here? How did the King of my childhood, the studio behind Finding Nemo and The Incredibles, end up producing bomb after box office bomb? Back in the day, even my family went to see Cars in the theater, and we only went once every two or three years! I had skipped the last few Pixar movies so I was generally curious to see whether Elio truly was as bad as people have been saying Pixar’s latest slate generally is.

It wasn’t that bad. If only it was; I’d have more to talk about in this review. It was worse than bad: it was aggressively mediocre.

Every beat of this movie felt derivative. As much as its defenders are touting it as that “original story” people are always complaining Hollywood doesn’t make any more, it felt just as tired and played out and familiar (in a bad way) as most of the IP movies in theaters these days. It’s a generic “power of friendship/family” and “creative outsider saves the day!” film: noble tropes in and of themselves, but tropes that have been done to death since the Disney Renaissance and which you have to be very creative with to make them seem original in 2025. Elio, unfortunately, does not have that sort of creativity up its sleeve.

The story follows our titular Elio, a young boy who has recently lost both of his parents and is living with his overworked Aunt Olga. He is incredibly depressed and lonely, and seeks to find a place where he belongs out with the aliens he is confident exist. Once abducted, he pretends to be the leader of Earth to fit in, gets into a diplomatic situation way over his head, finds a new friend in the shy and unaggressive son of the warlord threatening to conquer his peaceful alien compatriots, and must find some way to save the peaceful aliens and return home to Aunt Olga, who he realizes too late loves him very much.

There’s shades of many classic films in there (three that came to mind while watching were Hook, Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey, and Galaxy Quest), and in principle I have no problem with a movie wearing its influences on its sleeve. I just ask that it does something new, creative, and exciting with the old, familiar storylines, and Elio sadly does not. Everything is predictable and safe; no risks taken, and therefore no rewards earned. Elio is being received with a collective yawn by the public, with the few interested people willing to wait for it to hit Disney+ in a couple of weeks rather than take their kids to the ever-more-expensive theatrical experience. I would recommend the same; there’s nothing particularly wrong with Elio, and if you’re looking for something new to watch with your kids I wouldn’t necessarily discourage you from trying it out when it hits streaming. But the fact that a movie this safe, by-the-numbers, and corporate has the gall to represent itself as the banner carrier for “original stories” in Hollywood makes me a little bit angry, so if you decide to skip it even on streaming I wouldn’t blame you either.

The visual style of this film is confusing and also a bit of a letdown. On the one hand, the backgrounds and environments are gorgeous. There was one moment early in the film, an exposition dump about the Voyager probe, that was so glorious and so full of the beauty and majesty of the stars that I actually thought I might be giving Elio a glowing review. Most of the planets visited are creatively designed and visually stunning, and I was pleased to see that at least some creativity is still alive in the Mouse’s dungeon.

However, all of that is negated by the ugliness of the characters. The best way I can describe them is doughy, a weird gelatinous mass that rolls its way across the screen in a repulsive manner. This is true of all the humans and all but one of the aliens; there was no grace or beauty in the movement or design of these characters. Much has been said online about the “bean-mouth” design of Elio and how tired people are of it, and I must agree. It is ugly, and corporate, and boring; worst of all, it looks like every other Pixar movie of the last 5 years. The character designs and silhouettes of Elio are indistinguishable from Luca, Turning Red, Soul, or Onward. Heck, they look an awful lot like a Kroger or Grubhub ad. Think about how different even the human characters are designed in Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles. Pixar used to have a distinct visual style for each film, constantly pioneering new technology to bring a unique vision to life. But now, when we seemingly can do anything we want with computer animation, every film has the same ugly character design. If it wants its next movie to stand out, Pixar must take a creative risk and come up with a new and exciting visual style; otherwise viewers will continue to tune out.

One interesting behind the scenes story about Elio seems to be that an earlier cut was considerably more woke—and way worse. The Hollywood Reporter reported that a cut of the film was screened to test audiences in 2023 and when asked if they would buy a ticket to see this in theaters not a single person said yes. This cut reportedly contained elements suggesting that Elio was gay, and had him living with a single mom instead of having dead parents and living with his aunt. Pixar Corporate, sensing the vibe shift, ordered these elements to be excised from the film, and both the director Adrian Molina and actress America Ferrara (best known for playing a feminist preacher in Barbie) left the project in protest. Molina was replaced by Turning Red director Domee Shi, Ferrara by Zoe Saldana, and the film was apparently extensively reworked to fit corporate guidelines. Not that I think the woke cut would have been better, but considering the fact that there was such a corporate hand guiding this ship, is it any wonder that it felt boring, unoriginal, and safe? Pixar needs to hire better people, people with good story-telling instincts and no political axe to grind, and then trust them to tell good stories. You know, like they used to. And then people might just start turning out to see great animated Pixar films with their families in the summertime again.

You know, like we used to.