A One Mann’s Movies review of “Elio” (2025).
The latest Pixar – “Elio” – is a bit of an enigma. No one is going to see it! Well, when I say “no one”, it’s made a pretty dismal £2M at the UK/Ireland box office in its first 2 weeks of release and is currently languishing in 4th place behind “F1” (£7m); “28 Years Later” (£10m) and (I suspect particularly galling) “How To Train Your Dragon” (£16m). Worldwide, it’s sitting on a box office of $72 million (on an estimated budget of $150 million). Not good.
Even I wasn’t rushing to see it and I see everything! What was it: the trailer? The fact it WASN’T a sequel to something familiar? The rather overly childish poster? I don’t know. But I normally see films in the week they are released and it’s taken me ’til the end of the second week of release to see this.
The saddest thing of all is that it is really, really good!
Bob the Movie Man Rating:
“Elio” Plot:
Elio (voiced by Yonas Kibreab) is a young boy, recently orphaned and living with his Auntie Olga (voiced by Zoe Saldaña). He is sad, bitter, alone and dreams of being abducted by aliens: at least they might want him. One night, his dreams come true.
Certification:
UK: PG; US: PG. (From the BBFC web site: “Mild threat, scary scenes, violence”.)
Talent:
Starring (voices): Zoe Saldaña, Yonas Kibreab, Remy Edgerly, Brandon Moon, Brad Garrett, Jameela Jamil, Matthias Schweighöfer, Ana de la Reguera, Atsuko Okatsuka, Shirley Henderson, Kate Mulgrew.
Directed by: Adrian Molina, Domee Shi & Madeline Sharafian.
Written by: Julia Cho, Mark Hammer, Mike Jones & Adrian Molina. (With Jesse Andrews & Hannah Friedman. Based on a story by Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi & Julia Cho.)
Running Time: 2h 0m.
“Elio” Summary:
Positives:
- As you’d expect from Pixar, it’s glorious to look at.
- A surprisingly sophisticated story that manages to get you in the feels.
- A really wonderful pre-title sequence.
- Great music from Rob Simonsen.
Negatives:
- I blame the marketing: this is a more sophisticated offering than you would expect.
- Contains material that makes it a debatable outing for younger children: a PG, not a U.
Review of “Elio”:
A poignant study of a bereaved 11-year-old lost in the universe.
What is it with killing parents off? Disney and Pixar seem obsessed with the demise of at least one parent. In fact, it’s quite unusual to find a film with a ‘traditional’ two parent family: “Inside Out 2” strikes you as a bit of an anomaly. Here, we learn in the first minutes, that 11-year-old Elio has lost both parents and is grieving in his own way: by withdrawing from both his kindly Aunt (frustrated would-be astronaut Olga) and the world in general. Elio is inspired to communicate with alien intelligences during a trip to a space museum. This is in a desperate attempt to get abducted: since no-one on earth ‘wants him’ (untrue) perhaps they will?
The material is cleverly crafted to make you realise the gulf between the grieving boy and the ‘life beyond’ that he should be living. At one point, Elio is cloned so he won’t be missed on earth. “Should I stick with the low self-esteem and desperation to belong?” he/it asks. Of course, he/it doesn’t and we see him back on earth having a whale of a time with Aunt Olga.
Like father, not like son.
There is also a neat subplot involving the war-like Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett) and his pacifist son Glordon (Remy Edgerly). It’s a story arc all of its own as father comes to accept his son’s ‘differences’ in a genuinely moving way. Is Glordon a version of ‘gay’ for his species? That’s definitely the inference that I took from it. This is something that I would have thought the LGBTQ+ community would have recognised and embraced, particular given that it was released during Pride month.
Some great laugh out loud gags.
This one smashed the 6-laughs test for me, with some very funny gags, both written ones and visual ones. As a great visual gag, the whole concept of the Hylurgians being slug-like creatures in their weaponised carapaces is all very “Wizard of Oz”… or possibly Yogurt from “Spaceballs” that I just rewatched the other day. And I really enjoyed the ‘mission-completion phase’ of Elio’s clone: “Feel free to spread me over a house plant as nutritious fertilizer”, LOL.
A 5* opening.
As you’d expect from Pixar, the film looks great: the earth-bound elements look cool with the “Communiverse” being a bit of a drug-induced fever-dream!
But, for me, the most impressive part of the whole movie was the pre-title sequence where Elio visits the space museum. There he creeps into a new exhibit celebrating the “Voyager” spacecraft mission and its ‘golden record’ for alien-kind. (There’s a wonderfully sly gag here: the voiceover for this sequence is done by Kate Mulgrew….. “Voyager”… get it?!) Fans of “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” will also geek-out over a line of dialogue in here about “Voyager” being able to “complete its mission”! The graphics; the emotion; the science; Rob Simonsen’s music. It all combined to really make me go “Wow!”
A “PG”, not a “U”.
I think Pixar marketing have rather dropped the ball on this one. The poster, and to some extent the trailer, make you think that this is a film that might be most suitable for 5 to 7 year olds. Actually, I think it is much more sophisticated than that and more suitable for 8-11 year olds. A darker, moodier poster might have better set that message. (I asked Google Gemini AI to come up with something darker, and posted below is what it generated…. much more age-appropriate I think.)
For, I would state, that this is not a great film to take younger children to. I know we have often discussed here that ‘all children are different’ in terms of what will or won’t trigger them. But many children in the 5 or 6 year old range can get very anxious about their parents dying, and this film will trigger that emotion front and centre.
Kids might also be scared by some ‘mild threat’ and ‘scary scenes’. Some of this comes from the bullying of Elio; there are also some potentially frightening scenes involving Lord Grigon and (briefly) Glordon. Finally, in the age-old tradition of Baloo in “The Jungle Book”, “E.T.” and (most recently) “Lilo and Stitch” and “How To Train Your Dragon” there is a scene where a key character has an apparent death (but not death). (Shame on you Pixar: a glorious opportunity for someone to bellow “GLORDON’S ALIVE!!!”!)
Summary Thoughts on “Elio”.
One of the curious things about this film is that Pixar themselves seem to have been a bit nervous about how this would be received. As you may know, I’m a bit of a nerd in tracking the MPAA certificate numbers at the end of the film credits. One of the most recent ones, for “M3GAN 2.0” was 55511. By contrast, Elio’s certificate number is 54242…. over 1,250 films away, which implies that it’s been sat on the Pixar shelf, awaiting release, for a very, very long time. (To give you some context to that, “Equalizer 3” was number 54240 and “Drive Away Dolls” was number 54255. Yeah, that long.)
But, they really should have gone on the front foot with this one, as it is probably the most impressive Pixar effort for some time, definitely outstripping “Elemental” and also (in my view, just because it’s an original story), the Oscar-nominated “Inside Out 2“. It’s certainly a very curious move to release it in the UK in the middle of the school term: perhaps, if cinemas take the bait and keep it playing, it will pick up more business when the schools break-up.
So, my message to you, people of earth, is that is a mini-classic that is being woefully ignored and you should get out to your wonderfully air-conditioned local cinema and see it!
OK. Bye. Love ‘ya.
Where to Watch it (Powered by Justwatch)
Trailer for “Elio”:
The trailer is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETVi5_cnnaE.
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