Pixar has always had a gift for turning high-concept ideas into deeply personal coming-of-age stories. With “Elio,” the studio once again surprises us by taking something as human and intimate as loneliness and stretching it across the cosmos.
As we’ve seen time and time again, Pixar’s best stories don’t just entertain — they explore the human heart. With “Elio,” the studio turns its attention to something both tender and terrifying: what it means to feel alone. It’s a heavy subject, especially for a younger audience, but one that Elio approaches with warmth, empathy, and a surprising sense of wonder.
By viewing loneliness through different lenses, whether it’s a kid trying to make contact with alien life or a guardian unsure how to reach a grieving child, the film reminds us that being alone isn’t always about isolation. It’s about the struggle to connect, and how that desperate search might be closer than we think. As such, the result is that Pixar delivers something unexpectedly good.
Co-directed by Domee Shi (“Turning Red”) and Madeline Sharafian (“Burrow”), using an idea based on co-director Adrian Molina’s childhood — he stepped away from the project to focus on Coco 2 — Elio follows its titular 11-year-old hero (Yonas Kibreab), a child whose parents died in an accident and who is now left under the care of his Aunt Olga (Zoe Saldaña). Elio is a dreamer stuck on Earth, searching for a genuine connection with someone who understands him and all of his quirks.
His Aunt Olga puts her dreams and ambitions on hold to take care of a child who suddenly came into her life. But her strict and structured lifestyle often clashes with Elio’s free spirit. That inability to reach him leads her to enroll Elio in a behavioral camp. Meanwhile, Elio is seen sending out messages into space in hopes that life — any life — out there will take him. And one night, that hope comes true. When Elio is beamed up to the Communiverse, an interplanetary organization with representatives from galaxies far and wide, he’s mistaken for being the leader of Earth. As such, Elio must form new bonds with eccentric alien lifeforms, navigate a crisis of intergalactic proportions, and somehow discover who and where he’s truly meant to be.
On Earth, Elio has his head in the stars, and his personality keeps him from making friends or connecting with his aunt. So, his desperation to be abducted by aliens makes sense. When it finally happens, he feels like he’s found a place where he belongs. But the irony is, even though he’s millions of miles away from Earth, he still can’t find anyone to truly connect with. His loneliness deepens when he meets Grigon (Brad Garrett), a warlord who threatens violence if the Communiverse doesn’t grant him membership. Elio, caught in the lie, volunteers himself to negotiate peace.
During those interstellar talks, Elio meets Glordon, Grigon’s son, whose fearsome appearance is contrasted by a warm, gentle personality. Glordon wants nothing to do with war or conquest, even though it’s part of his family’s legacy. He too has felt the same pains of loneliness as Elio.
It’s that shared sense of loneliness that allows the two to connect — and it’s that unlikely friendship that becomes the beating heart of the film. They see each other for who they are, not who their parents expect them to be. While the story centers on what loneliness looks like from a child’s perspective, the film also reveals what that disconnect can feel like for a parent.
Through Olga, the film illustrates the emotional weight of parenting a grieving child — and grieving yourself in the process. She’s not cold or cruel, but overwhelmed and unsure how to bridge the widening gap between them. Her arc is less about control and more about letting go — of perfection, of fear, and of the pressure to always have the right answer. She doesn’t have all the answers, often relying on parenting books that don’t really understand Elio, and she imposes a military regimen that clashes with his imaginative spirit.
So when Olga has to shut Elio down because his dreams interfere with her job, he begins to believe she sees him more as a burden than a member of her family. And that forces him to change the way he sees himself. But the lengths she goes to in order to find out whether her Elio is a clone or not show just how deeply she wants the only family she has left back on Earth.
The same can be said for Grigon, who also struggles to connect with his son. Since all he’s known is war and conquering, it’s the only language he knows how to speak. Grigon values strength and dominance, and initially fails to understand his son’s emotional needs — or his desire to play, to be soft, to be different.
While Elio effectively conveys its themes of loneliness through both its narrative and visuals, it leans heavily on the emotional arc of its titular lead and Glordon. As a result, characters like Aunt Olga and Grigon don’t get as much screen time or development. Still, the film manages to show that they care in their own ways, even if their journeys feel a bit underexplored.
Likewise with the other aliens, who are underdeveloped but still there to help move the story forward. Characters like Questa, Tegmen, and Helix are more narrative devices than individuals.
Shi and Sharafian subvert expectations by refusing to rely on a traditional villain. Instead, Elio builds empathy through perspective — allowing us to understand every character’s emotional struggle, whether it’s a child lost in the stars or a parent buried under the weight of responsibility. The result is a story that may span galaxies, but never strays far from the heart.
And a lot of that story comes alive through the visuals, which are bursting with color, texture, and imagination. Elio is full of beautiful contrasts — a galaxy that feels both otherworldly and surprisingly lived-in. On Earth, Elio lives on an Air Force base with his aunt Olga. It’s sterile, cold, and lacking in color — an unnatural environment for a child like Elio. In contrast, the Communiverse is bright, vibrant, and full of diverse alien life.
It’s in the Communiverse that the film’s creativity really shines. Inspired by macrophotography, Elio’s space adventure unfolds in a multilayered environment — four parabolic discs, each with its own unique biome and climate, all coexisting on top of one another. Pixar creates a galaxy that feels unlike anything it’s done before.
That said, such an expansive setting — and the aliens that populate it, including the cute, helpful Ooooo liquid supercomputer and the shapeshifting, origami-inspired universal user’s manual — could have used a bit more exploration and exposition. Still, “Elio” isn’t really about that. As stunning as the visuals are, especially in 3D, where there’s an added depth to both Earth and the Communiverse, Pixar once again prioritizes story above all else.
Shi and Sharafian reframe the classic fear of abduction into something tender and hopeful. In a way, Elio’s desperation to find someone to connect with by sending a message beyond the stars is less about escaping Earth and more about being heard. And that’s something anyone of any age can relate to. The irony is, those messages don’t need to be sent as far as Elio sends them. Sometimes, all it takes is the courage to say how you feel to the person right in front of you.
That’s the quiet beauty of “Elio.” it reminds us that connection isn’t some distant, cosmic miracle. It’s a fragile, everyday act of vulnerability. Whether it’s between a boy and his aunt, a warlord and his son, or two lonely kids from opposite ends of the universe, “Elio” shows us that being seen and understood is the most powerful kind of contact we can make.
8.5/10
Elio is in theaters June 20, 2025
