Elio (Yonas Kibreab) is an 11-year-old boy who has recently lost his parents. He’s been taken in by his aunt Olga (Zoe Saldana). Olga works in orbital analysis and is gone a lot. Feeling like he doesn’t belong anywhere and nobody wants him, Elio finds comfort in interplanetary life. He takes on an obsession with ham radios and attempts to communicate with aliens while simultaneously trying to get abducted nightly.
One night, Elio is finally abducted by aliens. He’s introduced to an incredible new environment with alien species the likes of which the human eye has never seen or interacted with. He wants to stay forever until they reveal that they think he’s the leader of Earth. Elio lies his way into the alien community, but to stay he must risk his life to save them.
There are themes in Elio that are circled back around in elegant fashion. Elio loses his family before the film even begins. He’s also weird enough that he doesn’t have any friends. The film tries to paint Elio in a creative light like he has this big imagination because he’s invented his own language and can lie himself into and out of any situation. But he mostly comes off as a shitty person that treats his hard-working aunt, who only wants to support him and for him to love her, like dirt.
The animated sci-fi adventure film is about Elio coming to terms with the loss of his parents. He feels alone, has low self-esteem, and has extreme acceptance issues. But the film explores what it’s like to find your own family made of new friends and that you’re never really as low or alone as you think you are.
He is initially shipped off to boarding school because of his uncontrollable behavior and inability to not be a destructive shit. Once he’s at the Communiverse, he meets a liquid-like supercomputer named OOOOO. She clones Elio and sends his clone back to Earth so no one will notice that he’s gone. But as Elio checks up on him, he sees what it’s like to be a family with his aunt and becomes homesick.
Visually, the film is at its best when Elio is at the Communiverse. The Communiverse is filled with all sorts of alien leaders from all over the galaxy with the intent of sharing their knowledge with others and hopefully recruiting other respectable leaders. These sequences are filled with all sorts of eccentric creatures while its “alien” explanation allows things like basic physics or logic to be thrown out the window.
Hands down the best character and most enjoyable part of the film is Glordon. He is worm-like and his design was inspired by larval insects and microbiotic creatures like the tardigrade. His mouth seems to go on forever and is overrun with teeth kind of like a Dune sandworm. He can spin web like a spider and is heat and lava-resistant. He looks menacing and scary, but once he gets an English translator has an adorable little kid’s voice and is super expressive even though he doesn’t have any eyes. The friendship he develops with Elio has way more of an impact than the one the film forces him into with his aunt.
Unfortunately, Elio crawls at a slug-like pace through what feels like the longest hour and a half of the summer. It struggles through its first hour as Elio lies to everyone around him, gets in way over his head with the aliens, and attempts to abandon his aunt forever. Elio’s big plan is to join the alien community and leave Earth with no intention of ever going back. But apart from the enjoyable montage of Elio showing Glordon the Communiverse, the entire movie is just “Oh no, I lied too hard and don’t know what to do now.”
Animated films and TV shows have used slow-motion before, but Elio has some of the worst slow-motion effects in the history of animation. The slow-mo here looks like it was a decision that was made in post-production as the effect doesn’t look to be part of the animation but the editing of the film itself. It’s done in a way that makes you think the projector is acting up or something. It’s so jittery and awkward looking and the intended effect is probably not whatever you see on screen.
Elio is visually fun to look at and it gets somewhat entertaining in its last 20 minutes or so, but is otherwise a big, disappointing bowl of intergalactic garbage. The film chooses to follow an unlikeable character who is a brat the entire time and the main takeaway is that he shouldn’t be so much of a shithead and be decent to those who actually care about him for some reason. There’s something fun and whimsical here trapped inside the body of an entitled, lie-spewing thundercunt.
