After losing his parents, a young boy named Elio is taken under the care of his Aunt Olga. Elio has a passion for space and truly believes that there are other forms of life out there. With his aunt being busy most of the time, he feels somewhat lonely and spends most of his time trying to reach out to whatever that form of extraterrestrial life really is. After finally making contact with aliens, Elio finds himself on an adventure, making new friends and discovering himself along the way.

What definitely made the movie for me was the characters. I found Elio to be a pretty interesting character, and one you really feel for straight from the beginning, as the movie doesn’t waste any time letting you know that he’s lost his parents, the two people he feels that truly understand him. His passion for his belief in the existence of extraterrestrial life may get a little heavy-handed and over the top at times, but it’s what makes him compelling - it’s all he feels he truly has.

His aunt was also quite interesting and understandable. She loves Elio, her nephew, but doesn’t think that his obsession his good for him, and also has a hard time juggling her time with work and taking care of him. I also really liked Elio’s sort of side companion, Glordon, the son of the main antagonist (somewhat of an antagonist, anyway). To use a word I don’t use often, he was a cute space creature that I really felt for as all he really wanted was to be something other than what his father and everyone from his sort of colony expected from him. He made for some of the more emotional and heartfelt scenes in the film, alongside Elio. Adding to that, the themes in this film were quite excellent, and something I think is important to put in a kids'/family film. It’s all about love, passion, and finding yourself, despite what everyone expects of you.

As a big fan of science fiction, I was definitely intrigued by the animation. For a lot of Pixar movies that look quite similar, I think Elio stands out just a bit with its many different space and creature designs, along with the many different glowing colors that really sort of popped out of the screen, so to speak. I think there was surprisingly some really good animated cinematography as well, really capturing the scope and imagination that went into making this movie happen.

Finally, before I get into my next section, I think this was just a really fun ride and adventure overall. It’s one of those science fiction adventure movies where you really kind of find yourself “swept away” in it all, and I mostly had a blast with those parts of the film. I enjoyed exploring this whole new world, or really part of the galaxy, along with the different spacecrafts and technology that came with that. I think it was a decent piece of worldbuilding made specifically for just one movie.

The only thing I would say I was mixed on was that the story itself was a bit generic and predictable. Maybe that’s a bit unfair to say, as this was very heavily-targeted towards kids, even more so than a lot of other Pixar movies, but for me at least, there weren’t a lot of tricks pulled in the story that really surprised me. It’s not a big deal, though, even for me, as the characters, themes, animation, and science fiction aspect of it all were what made the movie special to me, personally.

As far as negatives go, I definitely think the first half was a bit slow and just a tad on the boring side. Not so boring that it was a chore to watch or anything, but at first, I had a hard time connecting with the characters, particularly Elio and his obsession, and I felt that the film could have done a much better job introducing us to all of the space stuff. It wasn’t horrible, but I felt that there was a lack of heart that the rest of the movie had, which the first half also kind of needed. Instead, the first half was really just focused on setting everything up, which is fine, but the first half of a movie should always be more than just a setup.

Elio isn’t great by any means, and far from Pixar’s greatest, but I respect the ambition that Pixar has to still put out some new, original movies, even if they inevitably won’t do well, and I also enjoyed my time with it enough.