Elio (2025)

In a particular failing for Pixar, Elio manages to underperform in almost every department. The concept, while not terribly original, offers some opportunities for creative storytelling; none of those opportunities are capitalized upon.

The aliens are extremely boring and uninspired in design. The villain is just a walking gun and one of the ambassadors just appears to be various sea creatures slammed together. As a deliberate design choice, Elio's alien buddy lacks a face; the goal was to create expression in other ways, but it largely falls flat. The film seems to model many of its aliens after Earth's most elegant creature: the slug.

The human designs have a worse problem: they are downright ugly in every instance. It seems the majority of every character's head is composed solely of their mouth. It may also be that part of the deeply unpleasant nature of the character designs is the imposition of unnecessary levels of high detail on our otherwise cartoonishly proportioned characters. The reviewer also feels the design team used a strange ratio between some facial elements, provoking a bit of an uncanny valley effect.

The film is missing its core identity for complex production-related reasons; characters were reconceived with key attributes removed. Test screenings revealed negative feedback, there was a change in directorship, and indications of Elio's sexuality were removed. These were savvy commercial decisions, given the cultural landscape at the time of production. However, the rearranged story had lost its identity; some of Elio's characteristics were now out of place or inexplicable. Most importantly, the alienation of Elio from his peers is given less weight, as it now seems arbitrary.

This film has some language problems, and not the usual kind. First, the reviewer finds "Communiverse" to be an unintentionally loaded name. Meant to reference the word “community”, the name’s structure makes it sound otherwise. Elio and his alien friend also have problematic dialogue, as Elio refers to himself as "shredded" and his alien buddy is heard calling himself "hot". While children say all sorts of things, this is not the typical dialogue of a children's movie. In fact, most of these lines seem like leftover artifacts from a movie that never was. The film is only further damaged by its mixed dialogue identity.

Perhaps best treated as a lesson in knowing your audience, Pixar would do well to return to truly novel ideas, universal themes, and less autobiographical writing. Elio is a failure, but a mildly contained one.