I admit I wasn’t too excited to watch Elio when I saw the trailers. The premise sounded boring: Boy wants to be taken by aliens and live with them. The trailers weren’t any better at convincing me to watch it either. A friend thought it looked cute and wanted to see it though, and she absolutely loved it. I still wasn’t convinced. Anyway, partly out of a request asking if I wanted to review the film, I went to see it. Boy, I was totally WRONG about all my preconceptions about the movie! This was one of the BEST Disney Pixar movies I have ever seen! It’s Ghibli-level fantastic and wonderous! Forget all of Disney Pixar’s previous attempts at sci-fi movies, Elio blows them all out of the water! Everyone will enjoy Elio, especially kids, unlike Lightyear which tried to build a plot around the concept of Einstein’s General Relativity, to it’s detriment.
Elio is the story about a boy (Yonas Kibreb) who had recently lost his parents, so his aunt, Olga (Zoe Saldana), who’s a major with the Air Force, adopts him. Olga has given up her chance to become an astronaut to take care of Elio, so she does voice her disappointment about it, which Elio does hear unbeknownst to her. Feeling lonely and unwanted, Elio wanders into an exhibit about the Voyager 1 spacecraft. He triggers the exhibit’s narration from the famous golden record that was placed aboard Voyager 1, as a message about planet Earth and its inhabitants with the real voice of Dr. Carl Sagan of Cosmos fame. The exhibit itself is sneakily voiced by Kate Mulgrew who famously was the captain aboard Star Trek: Voyager. At the end of explaining Voyager’s mission to explore our solar system and beyond, Mulgrew says it is Voyager’s hope to discover that we are not alone in the universe. The words, “Not alone,” resonate with Elio immediately after just losing his parents, and he becomes obsessed with finding life out in space.
For years, Elio tries to get abducted by aliens by drawing in the sand on the beach near his home with him as the target for aliens to take him. He does this day after day after day. One night, he tries to recruit others with ham radios to join him in his search, but actually, he just wants to get his hands on more ham radios to boost his search. He meets Bryce (Dylan Gilmer) and his friend Caleb (Jake Getman), who turns out to be a bully, and because Elio wasn’t exactly honest with his intentions of the ham radio meet, they fight. Elio ends up with a temporary eye patch on his bruised eye.
Later, Olga brings Elio into work, frustrated that Elio had gotten into a fight and injured himself. She doesn’t know what to do with him. At an emergency meeting, an Air Force analyst and alien enthusiast Gunther Melmac (Brendan Hunt) claims he heard a response to the golden record aboard Voyager with a transmission that included Sagan’s voice and sequence of tones similar to the movie Close Encounters. He suggests they respond to the message, but he’s immediately dismissed. Elio, who has snuck into the meeting, decides to respond to the message after everyone leaves the room saying that he, Elio, welcomes the message senders and to come and get him. Unfortunately, the power needed to send the message is overwhelming enough to kill the power to the entire Air Force base.
Feeling useless at communicating with Elio, Olga decides to send Elio to a somewhat military camp for kids, and unfortunately, Bryce and Caleb are there as well as punishment for fighting with Elio. Besides bullying Elio during the day, at night, Bryce and Caleb along with some other boys decide to scare Elio later that night as well as give him a beating. Just before Elio gets hit by Caleb, everything freezes except for Elio and a light in the sky shines right onto him and the boys. Someone had received Elio’s reply and levitates him into the air through a wormhole of sorts to a place called the Communiverse!
Elio is immediately greeted by Ooooo (Shirley Henderson), a fluid supercomputer AI, that equips Elio with an advanced translator and introduces him to the commune of wonderous and adorable non-bipedal aliens from across the universe who welcome him as Earth’s leader and the person who sent Voyager to greet them. Elio is shown the wonders of the Communiverse which rivals even the Spiritual World from The Legend of Korra or any of the worlds Ghibli has created in their myriad of films. Even the bathroom is a watery playground! It’s a utopia in a spaceship where all aliens coexist and share their knowledge freely with everyone.
Before Elio could explain that he is not the leader of Earth though, the Communiverse is disrupted by the breakdown in negotiations with Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett), who wants to join the Communiverse just so he can use their knowledge to conquer the entire universe. Of course, the Communiverse rejects Grigon who then threatens to just take the Communiverse by force if he can’t join them. With this threat looming, the Communiverse has no choice but to cease all new applicantions to join them, and that includes Elio who would have to be sent back to Earth. Not wanting to go back home where he feels he’s misunderstood by Aunt Olga and friendless, as well as the middle of the beating by the boys at camp, Elio suggests to the Communiverse that he will negotiate with Grigon and stop the threat. The peaceful and pacifist Communiverse aliens accepts Elio’s offer to help, and it’s up to him to stop Grigon from attacking the Communiverse. Can Elio negotiate with a warlord? What happens instead is something that no one could predict and even Elio is surprised by the result.
I know the plot seems a bit messy and a bit long at times during the first part, but the movie is filled with magic and wonderful surprises that you would NOT expect just by looking at the trailers. I think Disney did a great disservice with what they chose to highlight in the trailers. Like I said, I was not impressed or interested just by the trailers alone. The second half of the movie was a delight to watch as Elio makes unlikely friends he never knew he had, including his dismissive Aunt Olga. The aliens of the Communiverse are unimaginably adorable and cute unlike the bipedal aliens seen in many movies of the past. I’m in love with Ooooo especially and want one for myself! The little nods to Carl Sagan, Voyager, the golden record, and Close Encounters were an added treat for space fans like myself who grew up seeing photos Voyager 1 and 2 transmitted back to Earth of the planets in our solar system. I loved how the notes in the message from space were added repeatedly to the soundtrack just like Close Encounters too, which was a film that changed my perspective on sci-fi in general when I was in 6th grade.
My vocabulary just isn’t large enough to describe how much I was enchanted by this film. It SHOULD get an Oscar nomination at the very least despite its flaws. It’s also a wonderful respite from the live-action remakes and sequels of old movies that I’ve watched several times already. It’s new, unexpected, and a thrill to watch! Don’t go and see rehashes or sequels of old movies. Don’t listen to the naysayers or even Disney’s own trailers. See Elio and come out with new wonder in your heart. You won’t be disappointed. I actually want to see it again too!
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