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Elio Has Trouble Getting Out of Its Own Head
Pixar’s latest is a movie about learning we’re not alone in the universe that nevertheless has trouble opening up its main character.
But Elio, which itself began as the baby of Coco writer Adrian Molina, only to then be ceded to directors Domee Shi and Madeline Sharafian, plays like something that was imperfectly assembled from its component parts, as though its creative team couldn’t figure out a way to align its visions of candy-colored intergalactic diplomacy with its emotional themes of empathy and learning to think about what’s going on inside those around us. Still, a few years ago, as though to counter a mild drift in focus toward young women in the Inside Out s, Turning Red, and Elemental, Pixar churned out Toy Story spinoff Lightyear, a space saga that felt explicitly and awkwardly reverse-engineered to reach a specific demographic the company apparently fretted it was losing. Instead, it crafts an interplanetary display to affirm his fantasies of escape — the Communiverse, a multispecies conference filled with cute aliens ranging from a telepathic flatworm (Jameela Jamil) to a rock-looking guy (Matthias Schweighöfer), who’ve united their civilizations in pacifist, high-tech harmony.
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