by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $15.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldaña, Remy Edgerly, Jameela Jamil, Brad Garrett, Young Dylan, Matthias Schweighöfer, Shirley Henderson, Atsuko Okatsuka
Intro:
… like being wrapped in a blanket stitched with stardust.
The alienated feel at home around other aliens. When it seems like you’re unable to relate to anyone else, it’s easy to find kinship in those who outwardly seem as far from an ordinary human as you feel inwardly. It’s the mentality that has led to so many Star Trek supporting characters being heralded as nostalgic comforters, or even aspirational goals for making it in the world as the oddity that they truly are (why be Kirk when you’re already Spock?), and it’s what leads young Elio (Yonas Kibreab) to want a UFO to take him somewhere far away from a planet that doesn’t feel like it wants him around.
It might be easy to pick on the optics of a story about a child who wants to be abducted, but both the text and the visuals do a lot to ground the idea to a pleasantly relatable level. Co-director Domee Shi and co-writer Julia Cho of Turning Red continue exploring similar themes about the struggles of growing up and looking after a kid going through that process, balancing Elio’s emotional estrangement with his aunt Olga (Zoe Saldaña), whose palpable frustration and deeper yearning for a way to connect with this kid who she didn’t even plan on taking care of.
Then again, the little critter might be onto something, because his interstellar adventures are incredibly inviting and fun to watch. The design and model work on the many weird alien races and the Communiverse headquarters that they congregate in, echo Soul’s attempts to make the unknown and strange approachable and even cuddly. This is especially true for Glordon (Remy Edgerly), whose tardigrade-inspired fuzzy worm-ness offers a friend for kids in the audience, and a precious bundle to protect at all costs for the adults. Another slam dunk for the Pixar toy design department.
Orbiting around the hour-and-a-half mark, Elio runs at a satisfyingly brisk pace, letting the protagonist’s experience of this interstellar playground hit all the right adventurous notes while still offering an emotional undercurrent. Pixar are old hats at delivering dramatic punch that makes even older audiences take note, and in detailing the growth arcs that most of the main cast go through here, its core message of embracing and owning that Other status finds a nice intergenerational groove. It sticks true to the aesthetics that have garnered such passionate fandoms in the more genre realms of fiction, where the stuff of nightmares and existential ick are more like friends and teachers.
Watching Elio is like being wrapped in a blanket stitched with stardust. It picks up the trajectory of Onward, Luca, and Turning Red with its coming-of-age narrative where the extraordinary speaks all-too-ordinary truths, being as much about the struggle of caring for a kid as it is just about being a kid. The intergalactic eye candy on offer is beautiful and many different genera of adorable, and it is remarkably effective in conveying the absence of connection with one’s surroundings and just how good it feels once that connection does get made. Take us to your toothy cuddle slugs.
