Elio (Pixar, 2025) & Elemental (Pixar, 2023)

Elio is an amusing space (mis)adventure about a young boy whose sees his biggest wish come true: to be abducted by aliens.

It’s a nice concept, and as kid friendly sci-fi fun it mostly works, but even though the new Pixar movie is colorful and imaginatively animated, it doesn’t scale the dizzy heights of absolute greatness.

Elio Solis (Yonas Kibreab) is, as these things go, a bit of a misfit, but, of course, that’s not his fault. The kid lost his parents at a young age, and is being raised by his aunt Olga (Zoe Saldana), who is in the military, working at a coastal base, where they follow space debris.

It’s not that they don’t get on, Olga is a great person who tries her best, but due to his trauma, Elio doesn’t really feel at home in this world, so he looks upward, to the skies, and possibly beyond, hoping that one day aliens will come and transport him to a better place.

Elio gets his wish to go on his intergalactic journey and the result is a story that is both entertaining and a little predictable so that it inevitably, as this is a Disney movie, will end with a sentence that involves the words ‘family’ and ‘home’.

A lot of stuff happens in between. Most of it takes place in the Communiverse, a place (and I’m quoting here) ‘made of translucent and luminescent qualities with a loosely defined gravity’, where alien ambassadors from all corners of the universe come together to welcome Elio, who through a slight misunderstanding, due to a slightly exaggerated S.O.S. message, is understood to be the earth’s leader.

(And why the hell not, if we’re looking at the generally poor state of the world’s leadership right now).

Unfortunately for Elio, he is confronted by some fierce competition in the form of Don…, no, the monstrous Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett), who also wants to become earth’s ambassador to the Communiverse.

Not to be thwarted, Elio strikes up a friendship with Glordon (Remy Edgerly), who happens to be Grigon’s incredibly likable son and like a true peacemaker doesn’t want to take after his war mongering dad.

It’s a fun relationship that gives heart to a movie that most of time seems a little too busy in going from one plot point to the next.

Written by Adrian Molina, Julia Cho, Mark Hammer and Mike Jones, Elio was originally supposed to be directed by Molina, who has Ratatouille and Coco to his credit. He was, however, replaced by Domee Shi and Madeline Sharafian, but due to the work he had already done, he was allowed to retain his director’s credit.

Also, there was some extensive rewriting as America Ferrara was originally going to be the voice of Elio’s mother, but apparently due to scheduling conflicts she was replaced by Zoe Saldana, not as Elio’s mother, but as his aunt.

These things happen, but it does point to some behind the scenes drama that may have had some impact on the quality of the movie. It is a shame, because Disney and Pixar have had a lot of success in recent years with sequels, like Inside Out 2, but not so much with original movies (anyone remember Wish?).

Another thing that bugs me with this movie is that the whole idea of the Communiverse sounds way too much like the Metaverse, which already makes it feel a little dated.

I kinda feel that Elio is the movie that’s supposed to provide some inter connective tissue between on the one hand, Pixar, and, on the other, Marvel, Star Wars and I guess Alien, as there are Aliens here in all shapes and forms, including a cute little package called Ooooo, voiced by the inimitable Shirley Henderson, and I think I even spotted some nods to the Alien-franchise.

This is all well and good, especially if those are the kind of franchises you live for, but it’s also all the brands you find on Disney+ and to me jamming it all together felt just a little cynical.

But even if it is just me, Elio, for both its qualities and sins, is not anywhere near the top of Pixar movies. And for a ‘brand’ that used to knock ‘em out of the park on a regular basis, that might be the real problem here.

I give it three stars.

Note: Elio is released this week in most of the world.

Elemental (Pixar, 2023)

Elemental works better as a love story than as an immigrant tale. But this Pixar effort is still worth it for the dazzling visuals and the lively voice cast.

Directed by Peter Sohn (The Good Dinosaur), from a script by John Hobert, Kat Likkel, Brenda Hauer and himself, the movie tells the story of fiery immigrants daughter Ember (Leah Lewis), who falls in love with her polar opposite: an easy going rich kid called Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie), who is made out of water.

So like fire and water, they are supposed to cancel each other out. But along the way they discover they have much more in common than they ever thought possible.

Ember and Wade live in Element City, where there are four kinds of people, with Earth and Air people being the other two, in the shape of Trees and Clouds respectively.

Visually it’s an amazing movie. At times it’s like experimental cinema. With all the various shapes and forms moving and dancing around on screen in a way I can’t remember having seen before in a mainstream animated movie.

What also works in its favor is that voice artists Lewis and Athie have real chemistry, which makes their romantic involvement very believable.

For me it’s enough to compensate the schematic set-up, in which the immigrants of Element City - which serves as a metaphor for modern US - are passionate people, while the others just try to water them down.

Of course, it’s all done with good intentions and the humanistic message of ‘why can’t we just live together?’ is definitely present, as it is in all Pixar-movies.

Still, a little more thematic subtlety wouldn’t have hurt the movie, but Elemental is still worth watching for the love story. And if you want the full visual experience you should definitely catch it on the biggest screen possible.

I give it 3 1/2 stars.

Note: Elemental is available to stream on Disney+. It is also available through various platforms like Amazon Prime Video, Google Play Films, Apple TV and Rakuten TV.