Pop Culture Happy Hour - Elio

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

In the new Pixar film Elio, a lonely kid dreams of being abducted by aliens. And then one day, it happens. Eager to find a place to belong, Elio (voiced by Yonas Kibreab) volunteers to save the aliens from a dangerous enemy. Along the way, he makes a friend and starts to think about Earth a little differently. The film was directed by Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi (Turning Red) and Adrian Molina (Coco).Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopcultureTo access bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening for Pop Culture Happy Hour, subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+ at plus.npr.org/happy.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

In the new Pixar film, Elio, a lonely kid, dreams of being abducted by aliens. And then one day, it happens. And these aren't just any aliens. They are aliens who need his help to save themselves from a dangerous enemy. Elio, eager to find a place to belong, thinks he's just the one for the job. I'm Linda Holmes, and today we're talking about Elio on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining me today is my co-host Aisha Harris. Hello, Aisha.

Hello, hello, Linda. Also joining us today is the Philadelphia Inquirer's Arts and Entertainment Editor and Film Critic, Bedatry D. Chaudry. Hello, Bedatry. Hello, hello. Lovely to be here. And also with us as culture writer Margaret H. Willison. Hello, Margaret. Hi, Linda. Elio Salis is a kid who's pretty lonely. His parents died, so he lives with his Aunt Olga, an Air Force major. He's fascinated by space, and because Earth is a hard place for him, he dreams of being abducted by aliens and finding a new place to be. One night, to his great surprise, it actually happens. The craft appears, the beam draws him upward.

I do it. I do aliens are looking for me. You saved my life! He meets the occupants of something called the communiverse, where the smartest and most special beings from different planets gather to think big thoughts and share big ideas. They offer Elio an opportunity to join their ranks, but first they need his help. A big scary monster is after them, and they need Elio to negotiate on their behalf.

Along the way, he makes a friend named Glorden. He reconsiders his relationship with his aunt, and he even starts to think about Earth a little differently. Elio comes from directors Madeline Sharafian, Domit She, and Adrian Molina. Melina co-wrote and co-directed Coco, and she directed Turning Red. Elio is in theaters now. Aisha, I'm going to start with you. What did you think of Elio? I came away thinking, oh, that was very cute and funny.

There are several moments where I kind of chuckled to myself out loud. And I really thought that there was a lot of beautiful visual imagery here. Most of the Pixar movies are very visually stunning. But this one felt a little different. Sometimes it kind of looks like Mario World, which is fun. And then other times, there's some slow motion effect that looks really cool. in animation, which we don't often get. So there are some things that it's playing with here.

I think it's one of the more memorable of Pixar's more recent outputtings. I don't think it quite rises to the level of the top tier Pixar movies. But it is solid and I enjoyed it. And I think a lot of kids are probably going to enjoy this as well. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's fair. But, actually, how do you fail? I agree with Aisha 100%.

I am a little older than the, I'm guessing, than the aimed, demographic of this film. So led to my reading of it as, you know, this larger question of all of us today asking, especially as immigrants, what is this idea of home? Where is home? Should we leave when we don't belong? And I don't know, maybe the news is making me read all this into the film. No, no, no.

Fair. And yeah, it's an extremely cute film. And I laughed and I teared up in a few places. But I do think this is like five different. Pixar films rolled into one, which doesn't always have to be a bad thing. But yeah. Yeah, I think that's a very reasonable take. Margaret, how about you? I guess I'm the Grinch on this panel. I didn't hate the movie. Like, if you have to take your child to this movie, you'll have a perfectly lovely time. It makes good use of the 90 minutes it keeps you there. It's well-paced,

and everyone in it is roughly appealing. But then my, like, snarky critics quip is I just don't understand why Disney felt the need to remake Lilo and Stitch twice in one summer. And that's a that I guess also speaks to. I feel like there's like a specificity to Lilo and Stitch and a spiritedness and a spikiness to the original cartoon that is really lacking in this for me. I just don't feel like I had as many hooks into the characters I wanted to. I don't feel like I had as clear an understanding of who they were and how they related to each other. outside of some very trite,

like established framing devices. Like, oh, of course he's an orphan. We're not really going to engage with what it's like to lose a parent in any meaningful way. But like, you should have that context. He's an orphan. And of course, his aunt is overwhelmed. But that also describes the movie Megan.

And I prefer that movie. This is not on my bingo card. No, I did not have that. No. I think that I am. maybe the person who liked this movie the most on this panel. And I really felt like it was a very charming example of the adventure Pixar movie as opposed to sort of the more giant gut punch of movies like inside out or up or some of those or even like, you know, Toy Story 3, some of those. But I do think that it's a very good example of kind of, you know, like I said, an adventure story with this kid who,

goes and meets a lot of, I agree with Aisha, a lot of really, like, fun design in the communeverse, fun design of the critters that he meets, this friend Glearden that he makes. I really, really liked the way that Glearden was conceived and animated. Those sort of critters are cool looking. I also really liked the way that they incorporated kind of this more cuddly Pixar look with the look of this kind of. of monster being that they have to fight, who is sort of from more of a transformers kind of world of kids' movies. I liked the way those two things were kind of brought together in a way

that I thought worked. I think one of the reasons why kids movies, when you're an adult, can feel trite and can feel repetitive, is that, you know, this is what happens in children's stories is that they often return over and over to these same ideas about. wanting to belong and wanting a place where you feel comfortable, which, you know, as Bedatry was mentioning, has a lot of applications for kids and for adults. It's one of the most foundational emotions there is, is that desire to feel grounded in a community. You know, is the way to join a community to prove yourself to them, right? Is that the way that you want to do it? Do you want to do it by proving your worth? Do you want to do it by getting to know people? Do you want to do it by making

a friend. There's a moment that I really liked at one point in the movie where Elio's aunt kind of perks up because he says he made a friend. And it's clear that that's really important to her. The other thing that I would just mention, one of the things our producers brought up, you know, when we were talking about this film, there are some signs that Elio may be autistic or maybe otherwise neurodivergent. There's a little card about showing your feelings. There's a reference to the idea of swaddling. Swaddling. Yep. And some of those things suggest that they're not overt about that. I think there's always a fair question about do you wish they would say it if that's what they're saying?

Or do you want to leave it more open? Because, you know, lots of kids do feel kind of out of place on earth. And you don't want to necessarily say the movie is only about feeling that in one particular way. But I really liked it. I thought it was really sweet. I thought it was really funny. I really did like Elio as a character. He kind of jumped up.

From the beginning, I felt like I really loved this kid. I loved his kind of colander on the head, love of space. And his enthusiasm, when you heard it in that clip when he's being abducted by aliens and he's like, Yahoo! I'm so excited. Like, I think that's a really cute idea. Yeah. And I, you know, appreciate that read of Elio could be a person with autism. But also, you know, and if you take a larger view, it can speak to kids who feel, quote, unquote, different for whatever reason.

their skin color might not be the same as most of their classmates or they could be queer or like they just don't want to be what their parents want them to be. So this has always been the fascination of children's literature like Wizard of Oz. Dorothy just wants to go home. You know, everyone wants to come back to a place that is safe and accepting, which can be as political as you might want to make it. But it's also a very simple idea. So I think I appreciated that about this film as well. Yeah, I mean, budding up against that idea of wanting to belong is this idea of what it means to be strong and powerful. And you see that in the Glorden character that Elio befriends, Lord Grygon, who is his father, voiced by Brad Garrett, there's this whole thing about like masculinity, this idea of at a certain age they put on an armor.

It's very literal. It is you were shedding your innocence and you were becoming a man or you were becoming. A war machine. A war machine. Yes, yes. Because the mother is mentioned, but she's not seen. She's a warrior. She's off fighting wars.

Yeah. She's off fighting the blood wars or something. It's something like that. It's really interesting because when I think about that and the fact that the movie Mufasa, which came out not too long ago, which was, of course, the prequel to the Lion King, that was also dealing with this idea of masculinity and sons being taught a certain way of looking at life. And it's interesting to see that coming up. in this era, especially when we are seeing all this posturing in the real world of these ideas

of what masculinity is. And I think that's what kind of made this a little bit more interesting than I think it would have been otherwise if it had just been about ALEO wanting to belong somewhere. I think you could argue that maybe that is too many ideas and they don't gel. But I think for me, it gelled okay. And it was nice to sort of see this pushing back against what masculinity or what, I mean, masculineity, because they're not men. They're not humans. But you know what I mean. No, but it is.

And you can certainly also say that it's maybe interested in speaking to a broad political spectrum of men because there is a character who's coded as sort of like a male loner character who is having problems with his female supervisor who has conspiracy adjacent belief in aliens. And he gets to have a really big hero moment in this. Because he is the one, you know, a. attending his ham radio at a critical moment when he can help this adventure move forward. And again, we don't specifically get him coded as anything.

He's written in such a way that a lot of people could identify with him. And it could be a significant identification and like a legitimate identification. And I'll say that that's artfully done in the movie across the board, right? That they do a good job of that. Honestly, I think I would have a much better time with this movie. if he wasn't an orphan. Yeah. It's the Disney picks our way.

I know, but I guess as somebody who has lost a parent, I think a lot about whether grief is depicted for people experiencing grief, right? Or whether it's depicted for the ease and comfort of an audience that wants to, like, imagine that possibility, but not really engage with it in a heavy way. And it's so often the latter and so rarely the former. And, like, I'm surprised to see that Adrian Molina is amazing. need your force behind this because he's also the person who wrote Coco and directed Coco. And I would say that is a movie about grief, like for people who have experienced grief, right? It doesn't alienate people who haven't, but like it really speaks in a detailed and meaningful way to people who have. Whereas this, I honestly think the story could have worked better if instead of having this conflict with an aunt, Elio was having this conflict with parents. I think that's absolutely a fair point. And I think what they're trying to do is create a situation where it's believable that he

might really think, I don't want to be on earth anymore. There's nothing here for me. Nobody cares about me. It's not that kids never feel that way when their parents are alive. I don't want to say that at all. But I think for them, they're telling this particular kid's story. And they decided the way for it to work with him is he's lost the people that he felt closest to. And he doesn't have confidence in his relationship with his aunt. And she doesn't really have confidence in it either, which I really liked about it, that you also get a little bit of her side of what it's like to be taking care of this kid. But at the same time, as Margaret said, the purpose of the movie is not to be about grief. And I think it's a lot of grief to give a story when the story is not really a story about grief.

I do want to just mention Jonas Kibrayab, who voices Elio, I think is so good in this because it is so hard to be. a quirky little kid who is super hyper enthusiastic and to be specific and not annoying. And I really, really like this performance. As I said, I keyed into this kid right away. I think the voice performance is part of it. It definitely feels like a kid. It feels like an actual kid with all this sort of enthusiasm and self-doubt. There's some really good comic timing in this performance. There's a good sense of how to deliver a joke. I really did. like this casting. And as I said, this is not kind of first-tier Pixar where I'm sobbing and crying and where there are emotional elements that seem to be really for adults, which I think is true

of Inside Out and a few other things. And Coco and a few other things. With that said, there's some really fun playing around with this phrase of like, bye, I love you that I thought was really cute. Yeah, that is well used. That reminded me of Mindy from Animaniacs. Do you remember that character, the baby? Okay, I love you, bye-bye. Really quickly, back to your point, Margaret, about this sort of lack of specificity in certain places. I do think it's really fascinating that we've already mentioned Adrienne Molina, who was one of the directors on Coco, but also Domit She, who did Turning Red, which is, to me, one of the best Pixar's of the last, like, 10 years. And, like, so specific.

And so specific again. And she has both her parents. It's very interesting to see them working on something that is less specific. And it's very hard to know where that is coming from. But I do hope that we get more stories that feel steeped in specificity of culture and a specificity of just like relationships in a way that I do agree is not quite here in a way that I want. This movie feels like it was sanded down to be a little less specific and like expertly sanded down. Like, you couldn't ask for a better finish. But I feel like I want there to be like 11 more minutes of movie.

And in that, just like something a little bit more concrete I can hold on to about some of these characters on the earth. Yeah. I mean, to that point, I know, you know, we know the family is Spanish speaking, right? We don't quite know where the family is from. And again, like, I'm not saying it's important to the film's story, but it might have been a nice touch. know, there's this scene and it's stuck out to me. It's like a few seconds where Elio is in Communiverse and they're having a great time with every, like, you know, he's made this friend and they're having a great time.

And on the table of treats, there's like they're burgers, but very prominently there's concha. And I'm like, wow, it sounds trite. What does it mean to feel quote unquote seen? You know, everyone has talked about this too much. But I do think that those are very nice little touches. And also there's something to be said about cute aliens, right? Like, you know, aliens, I absolutely relate to this because my work visa calls me an alien.

So, you know, to show that... With exceptional talent, I hope. Absolutely. Why else would I be here? Jokes apart. But, like, you know, to see aliens who are cute, aliens who don't want to abduct you and steal your jobs, you know? I have read way too much adult into this film. because, you know, we grew up in the 90s.

Like, aliens were, like, really scary, blood dripping. Like, there was something always wrong with them and they were hideous. So I'm very happy that, you know, we aliens get our chance to shot as cute means. That's fair. Hear here. Well, tell us what you think about Elio. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash PCHH and on Letterbox at letterbox.com slash NPR pop culture. have a link in our episode description to that.

And that brings us to the end of our show, Aisha Harris, Benatri, D. Chaudry, Margaret H. Willison. Thanks so much for being here. You are always welcome in this hour home. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Thank you. And as cute beings, we can collectively say that this is a good summer watch for people of all ages.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is a great way to support our show in public radio. you get to listen to all of our episodes sponsor-free. So please go find out more at plus.npr.org slash happy hour or visit the link in our show notes. This episode is produced by Liz Metzger, Hufsofothamah, and Mike Katzif, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. And hello, come in, provides our theme music.

Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Linda Holmes, and we'll see you all next week. Bleep bloop.