Cast: Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldana, Remy Edgerly, Brandon Moon, Brad Garrett, Jamila Jamil,

Written By: (too many people, three credited with screenplay, three credited with story by, and two who made additional contributions to the screenplay)

Directed By: Adriane Molina, Madeline Scharafain, Domee Shi

Original Score By: Rob Simonson

Release Year: 2025

Studio: Disney/Pixar

Audio Description Produced By: No credits Were Listed

Written By: Need Credit

Narrated By: Need Credit

What Is It?: In the latest Pixar offering, Elio is a young boy recently orphaned through the loss of his parents, who is now being raised by his aunt. Elio is obsessed with space, aliens, and even created his own language he used to speak with his parents. His aunt can’t connect to him, and is busy with her job tracking space debris. But, when a random signal is received from deep space, and Elio is the one to answer, he is beamed up on the ride of the galaxy, and the adventure of a lifetime.

What Works: Pixar movies often have a deep truth buried within them, and the best ones resonate with their audiences. I’m not sure it is possible for Pixar to ever actually top themselves, as a handful of their movies are perfect as is. I adore wholeheartedly the first three Toy Story films, Wall E, Ratatouille, up, and inside Out, with both Incredibles and Finding Nemo being just a tad behind. Now, since they’ve started stumbling through a few misses, like Turning Red, Toy Story 4, and Lightyear, I’m just expecting something as good as Luca. Elio is at least as good as that, and perhaps if there weren’t so many cooks in the kitchen, it could have even been better.

We come from a long line of To infinity and Beyond, Just Keep Swimming, Anyone Can Cook, and films whose tales transcend the animation and ring true for their audiences. At its core, Elio is taking the long held concept of not being alone in the universe, and transferring it onto Elio. It uses that in the obvious sense, through an alien encounter, but also through Elio, who is begging to be taken because he feels like he has nothing left for him on earth anymore. For kids who feel alone, or don’t have any friends, Elio is a journey worth taking because of the lessons Elio will learn along the way. It is also the typical Pixar imagination train of ideas, feeling very different from things we’ve seen before.

the vocal performances are fine here, but there isn’t an immediate stand out in the way you felt Ed Asner in Up, Patton Oswald in ratatouille, or the timeless combination of John Goodman and Billy Crystal in monsters Inc. I enjoyed the score, but again, nothing quite on the level of Michael Giacchino’s theme from Up, or the Randy Newman hit You’ve Got A Friend In Me.

What Doesn’t Work: Disney has long been killing off parents. It is quite a thing, from Snow White in the very beginning, our hero’s, heroines, princes, and princesses have almost all been missing at least one parent. even Aladdin, whose mom was originally storyboarded into the film, ended up presented as an orphan street rat until the third film of that series.

But in many instances, we’ve at least seen the parent long enough to interact. Anna and Elsa’s parents are in the beginning of Frozen, and Tarzan’s parents are too. this movie needed a scene with Elio in his parents, either to open the film, or to anchor it as a flashback. he seems disconnected from his world, but he’s a quirky kid. It would have been emotionally grounding to see how his personality was embraced by his Mom and dad, because his Aunt can’t quite understand him,.

And that full circle type of emotional closure is what has sealed certain films. it is the full story of Carl and Ellie in Up, and when Carl finally lets go of the house, the meaning of what he’s actually letting go of. In Elio, instead of just having an awkward kid with dead parents and a seemingly confused aunt, show us. Take us down memory lane, like with Jessie’s Song in Toy Story 2. That beautiful flashback showed us all we needed to know about her loneliness.

There’s a secondary plot involving an alien friend that Elio meets, and that young alien being a part of this war lineage he wants nothing to do with. Sometimes contrasting stories work well too, with this being an opportunity where you could show someone like Elio who feels smothered by the family they have. instead, the depth here is mostly relegated to the father (voiced by Brad Garrett), who is the chieftain, and expects his son to follow in his footsteps. It comes across less as two souls with opposite emotional arcs, or even two with the similar arc from different walks of life, and more like a reminder that Elio doesn’t have a dad, but also can’t find the words to communicate his feelings to the audience… ever.

The Audio Description: It is a very nice track, with there being a lot of opportunities for description. One of my favorite moments in description this year came at the end. Elio is offered an ambassador badge a few times in the film, and once toward the end, the badge is described in great detail. it felt like this was going to be the thing for Disney’s Pin collection, and they really wanted to make sure even blind people knew what it was so they could buy it. but, seriously, a very in depth description of something that has nearly identical purpose of a grape bottle cap from another Pixar film.

Why You Might Like it: Despite its flaws, it is actually a solid Pixar film. It may not be quite as good as last year’s inside Out 2, but it also eclipses several titles released in the last five years.

Why you Might Not Like it: maybe you’re just done with Pixar. In which case, get your ass to Disney Plus and press play. I don’t care what your feelings are, if you can push play on this and create a metric, you are at bare minimum telling the House of mouse that you are *interested* in original ideas. the complete failure of Elio at the box office felt intentional from Disney, and if you don’t watch this film, or even let it play out on one of your screens, you are contributing to what will soon be a never ending stream of sequels, reboots, revivals, spinoffs, and otherwise entirely unoriginal concepts. Elio isn’t adapted from a book, or a film, or anything. Pixar used to champion originality, and now they are figuring out how to extend the life of all their old original ideas because apparently either we don’t want anything new, Disney won’t let them create it, or they are incapable of doing much more than Elio.

Final Thoughts: Pixar’s Elio deserves more love than it has gotten, which is probably why he feels so alone in a world that seemingly skipped his film. If you want original films, you have to watch original films.

Fresh: Final Grade: 8.1/10