Pixar has a knack for coming up with good opening salvos, and Elio, the animation company’s latest movie, kicks off with a strong one. When we meet the 11-year-old kid, voiced by Yonas Kibreab, who gives this sci-fi dramedy its title, he’s nestled under a commissary table and in state of mourning. His parents have died. His aunt, Olga (Zoe Saldaña), has taken over the role of caretaker for the boy. She’s a career military woman who’s given up dreams of training to become an astronaut in order to make sure Elio has legal guardianship; Olga will now have to stay firmly on terra firma and monitor the stratosphere for space debris. When she goes to find her nephew to bring him home, he’s nowhere to be found. The child has no exit plan except to make an exit, period.
Elio ends up hiding in a darkened room he stumbles across on the base, which turns out to be an exhibit for the Voyager 1. A newsreel-like film begins playing, informing of him of how this spacecraft and its twin were launched in 1977, with the goal of establishing communication with distant life forms. It houses “the Golden Record,” a time-capsule recording of human voices and other Earthly achievements that would hopefully double as a beacon. Over the soundtrack, Carl Sagan says that we have finally reached the point where communication with extraterrestrials could become a reality, and this interstellar message-in-a-bottle would be our best way of making it happen. The lad is transfixed. First contact would prove that we, as a species, are not alone in the universe. And if Elio himself could connect with aliens across the vastness of the cosmos, then he, too, would not be alone as well.
It’s the sort of concise, eloquent and moving stage-setting that’s helped establish Pixar as more than just Disney‘s younger, hipper sibling-slash-corporate-holding. And when Sagan’s proclamation that we are not alone gets a callback in the climax, you can feel the beginnings of a lump forming in your throat. We don’t want to say that this sequence is the highlight of Elio‘s storytelling, or that this tale of friendship wish-fulfillment peaks early. To be honest, we’re thankful that Pixar is still interested in making films based on original scripts, and are neither sequels nor involve cars that talk. Co-director Domee Shi is responsible for what’s arguably the company’s most underrated gem, Turning Red (2022), and inarguably their best heartstring-plucking short, Bao (2018), and we’re on record for stanning a legend. It’s more that the possibilities suggested by this sublime opening remain suggestions, and that most of what happens in between the Sagan-narrated bookends skirt close to being just another boys-adventure romp. You’ll still get something better than your average cut-rate Mouse House cash cow, and way, way better than a live-action remake of animated staple. But dear Walt, how you wish this trip to the stars wasn’t so beholden to the gravitational pull of being just decent enough.
After Elio gets fully bitten by the watch-the-skies bug and attempts to reach out to alien life forms — rendered in a montage set to Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime,” a.k.a. the perpetual soundtrack cut most in danger of becoming the thinking man’s “All Star” — our tween hero finds himself more alienated than ever. An attempt to bolster his signal under the guise of a junior ham-radio club ends with Elio getting clocked in the eye. Still, he persists. Overhearing a musical motif that’s been picked up by a satellite, and which a base employee thinks might be an extraterrestrial howdy-do, Elio sneaks in to communications room and sends a message. The next day, he receives a reply in the form of a green ray that abducts him. He’s finally about to have the close encounter of the nerd kind he’s dreamed of!
You have to be careful what you wish for, of course, and Elio quickly discovers that the intergalactic committee of ambassadors who’ve snatched him up, collectively known as the Communiverse, believe he’s Earth’s leader. Worse, they expect him to make peace with a warmongerer named Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett), whose reaction to being denied Communiverse membership is to destroy them. We’re going to assume that this bad guy’s strong resemblance to Toy Story‘s in-house villain Emperor Zurg is a total coincidence. Maybe the sketch artists were on a tight deadline?
The bad news: Elio’s stab at making peace with the overly sensitive Grigon ends with him being imprisoned and, like his compatriots, marked for extinction. The good news: When he escapes his cell, he meets Glordon (Remy Edgerly), Grigon’s neglected son. They concoct a plan that involves faking Glordon’s kidnapping, with the hope that a faux-hostage situation can broker a ceasefire. Eventually, Elio and his brother from another inter-special mother are the only things keeping everything from total Grigon-fueled annihilation, etc.
All’s well that ends well, and Shi and her co-director Madeline Sharafian, along with a gaggle of credited screenwriters/story consultants, know how to thread in thrills and laughs and tearjerking beats on the way to that aforementioned sublime series of parting shots. The Close Encounters references definitely shout out that sci-fi landmark’s influence, but the bigger touchstone here is a different Spielberg movie that mixes cosmic bonding and misfit kids. Elio’s name is just a few letters short of Elliott. He’s also got an extraterrestrial best friend. Except rather than helping a candy-loving buddy phone home, Elio is trying to leave his home planet and find a room to call his own in the outer reaches of the galaxy, one desperate plea at a time. It’s Pixar’s E.T., played out in reverse.
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