Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
If eleven-year-old Elio Solís, the protagonist of the 2025 animated Disney film Elio, had to choose a personal catchphrase, it would come from Radiohead’s song Creep. The lyrics – “I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo. What the hell am I doing here?. I don’t belong here” – perfectly capture his state of mind. Elio is a space-obsessed kid who hopes aliens will abduct him, convinced that he’s a misfit on planet Earth.
Elio (voiced by Yonas Kibreab) treats alien abduction like a daily ritual, lugging his home-made space gear around, scribbling messages in the sand, and hoping someone out there is listening. Friendless at school and convinced he’s an afterthought in his aunt’s tightly scheduled life, he sees extraterrestrials as his best shot at finally being wanted, a setup the film relies on for both humour and heart.
When the impossible finally happens and Elio is abducted, fantasy crashes headlong into responsibility, landing him in the middle of an unexpected intergalactic crisis. Zoe Saldaña (Avatar, Maya and the Three) voices Olga, Elio’s aunt, a U.S. Air Force major and his guardian after his parents’ death, whose grounded presence contrasts sharply with Elio’s cosmic escapism.
Will Olga go searching for her nephew? Can she bring him back? Or will the boy find his own version of a happily-ever-after among a galaxy of colorful extraterrestrial beings? These questions drive the narrative.
Visually, the film leans into a bright, candy-coloured palette reminiscent of ‘Elemental’ and the ‘Inside Out’ films, clearly designed to dazzle younger viewers with a sensory overload of colour. Older audiences, however, may find the relentless vibrancy overwhelming.
While the sci-fi fantasy premise of a boy wanting to be kidnapped by aliens to escape Earth sounds fresh and fun, the creators spectacularly fail to maximise the story’s comedic potential. The pacing feels slow, choppy, and flat.
A cute alien character introduced in the film’s second half injects a much-needed burst of energy into the story. Beyond that, however, the film falls short of being as original, refreshing, or entertaining as Disney intended it to be.
Rating: 5 on 10. Watch ‘Elio’ on Disney+ / Hotstar
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