Producer: Mary Alice Drumm   Directors: Madeline Sharafian, Donee Shi and Adrian Molina  Screenplay: Julia Cho, Mark Hammer and Mike Jones   Cast: Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldaña, Brad Garrett, Remy Edgerly, Brendan Hunt, Shirley Henderson, Matthias Schweighöfer, Brandon Moon, Naomi Watanabe, Jameela Jamil, Ana de la Reguera, Anissa Borrego, Dylan Gilmer and Jake Getman    Distributor: Walt Disney Studios  

Grade:  B

Take 1985’s “Explorers,” excise Joe Dante’s twisted brand of humor, add a healthy dose of Spielbergian sentiment (mostly via “E.T.”) and sprinkle Pixar animation wizardry profusely over the result, and you’ll have something very close to “Elio,” a pleasant, visually sumptuous but ultimately merely serviceable entry in the studio’s ever-growing canon.  It will enthrall kiddies, and while the adults accompanying them won’t find as much to appreciate in it as they do in Pixar’s best efforts, it’s certainly more enjoyable than most of the stuff being sold as “family friendly” nowadays.     

Yonas Kibreab voices the title character of Elio Solis, a cute eleven-year-old kid recently orphaned and now under the guardianship of his aunt Olga (Zoe Saldaña).  He’s understandably grieving, to the extent that he feels, if you’ll pardon the expression, alienated from everyone, including Olga; though she’s given up her dream of becoming an astronaut to care for him, she’s definitely uncomfortable in her new role, and he senses that.  Feeling that there’s no one on earth who cares for him, he yearns to make contact with other planets, even trying to get aliens to abduct him by advertising his willingness to go to the skies.  That effort, though, leads to him turning two older kids—Bryce (Dylan Gilmer) and Caleb (Jake Getman)—whom he’d hoped to recruit for him ham radio club—into enemies.  He’s more alone than ever. 

Olga, meanwhile, has remained with the Air Force, overseeing a division that deals with space debris, and one day she brings Elio with her to the office.  While there he learns about the NASA spacecraft Voyager, with its message inviting contact with other worlds, and also overhears a conversation with manic Professor Melmac (Brendan Hunt), who claims to have received a message in response to it.  Putting the two together, Elio manages to be in just the right place when a spaceship housing the Communiverse, a sort of outer-space United Nations, arrives and transports him, assuming him to be the leader of earth who might arrange its affiliation with their organization.  He’s happy to go along with the misconception, especially after one of the resident ambassadors, OOOOO (Shirley Henderson), makes a clone of him to go to earth to cover his absence at home.

Unfortunately Elio’s arrival coincides with the Communiverse’s being threatened by Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett), the despotic ruler of Hylurg, who cuts an imposing figure in a gargantuan metal battle suit.  Refused admission to the Communiverse, he vows revenge, and Elio, as proof of his bona fides, volunteers to go to Hylurg to reach an accommodation with him.  The diplomacy doesn’t go well, but Elio is gleefully welcomed by Grigon’s son Glordon (Remy Edgerly), an adorable slug-like critter who proves to be as alienated from his daddy as Elio is from Olga.  The two hit it off wonderfully, and their camaraderie helps to resolve not only the intergalactic turmoil but their own individual family issues, though, of course, there are plenty of complications along the way.

“Elio” reportedly was a troubled production, and the screenplay by Julia Cho, Mark Hammer and Mike Jones sometimes feels a bit lumpy.  But the story moves along fairly quickly, thanks to sprightly editing from Steve Bloom and Anna Wolitzky, and the direction shared by Madeline Sharafian, Donee Shi and Adrian Molina (the latter of whom originally conceived of the project) is able enough.  If some elements, like the relationship between Elio and Olga, are insufficiently worked out, others, like the amazement of Olga at the change in her nephew’s behavior when the ever-helpful clone replaces him, are quite amusing. 

What really sells the picture, though, are the animation in the outer-space sequences and the bond the plot creates between Elio and Glordon. Animation supervisors Jude Brownbill and Travis Hathaway, along with their talented team of artists, have, along with production designer Harley Jessup, crafted sumptuously colorful settings aboard the Communiverse ship and on Hylurg, and populated them with an eye-popping array of characters—including a wild variety of planetary ambassadors including Henderson’s gelatinous OOOOO, Jameela Jamil’s radiodonta Questa, Matthias Schweighöfer’s rocky Tegmen, Brandon Moon’s chunky slug Helix, Anissa Borrego’s fluffy, poodle-like Mira, Ana de la Reguera’s sharky Turais and Naomi Watanabe’s wormlike Auva.  The designers had a field day fashioning these critters, the animators have realized them all with panache, and cinematographers Jordan Rempel and Derek Williams have captured them all in lustrous tones.  

The pride of the bunch, though, is Glordon, whose plump, squirmy form might at first seem ungainly but becomes remarkably agile as the story proceeds.  Edgerly’s sparkling voice work adds immeasurably to the character’s charm, as does Garrett’s booming delivery to his daddy’s imperiousness.  Kibreab gives Elio a spunkiness than sometimes verges on the obnoxious, and Saldaña comes across a mite uncertain about how to play Olga, but the writing may be more at fault here than the performances.  The rest of the voice work is excellent, and Rob Simonsen’s score goes from bouncy to frantic as the narrative leaps shift.

One might regret that “Elio” shows less imagination than Pixar’s best, succumbing too often to tropes that have become familiar in the studio’s films.  But for the most part the recipe still works; this is a likable movie, if hardly an instant classic.